I've had it in for you for a dozen years, and now you're going to get it good and plenty! Good night and to hell with you!"
Blake did not look up. Manning slipped an arm through the old man's.
"I'll go along with you for a little while," said Manning quietly.
"Just to see that you don't start any trouble."
As the pair were going out Mr. Brown, who had thus far not said a single word, bent his fatherly figure over Blake.
"Of course, you realize, Mr. Blake, that our relations are necessarily at an end," he said in a low voice.
"Of course," Blake said dully.
"I'm very sorry we cannot help you, but of course you realize we cannot afford to be involved in a mess like this. Good night." And he followed the others out, Old Hosie behind him.
For a space Katherine stood alone, gazing down upon Blake's bowed and silent figure. Now that it was all over, now that his allies had all deserted him, to see this man whom she had known as so proud, so strong, so admired, with such a boundless future--who had once been her own ideal of a great man--who had once declared himself her lover--to see this man now brought so low, stirred in her a strange emotion, in which there was something of pity, something of sympathy, and a tugging remembrance of the love he long ago had offered.
But the noise of the front door closing upon the men recalled her to herself, and very softly, so as not to disturb him, she started away.
Her hand was on the knob, when there sounded a dry and husky voice from behind her.
"Wait, Katherine! Wait!"
CHAPTER XXVI
AN IDOL'S FALL
She turned. Blake had risen from his chair.
"What is it?" she asked.
He came up to her, the proofs still in his hands. He was unsteady upon his feet, like a man dizzy from a heavy blow. The face which she had been accustomed to see only as full of poise and strength and dignity was now supremely haggard. When he spoke he spoke in uttermost despair--huskily, chokingly, yet with an effort at control.
"Do you know what this is going to do to me?" he asked, holding out the proof-sheets.
"Yes," she said.
"It is going to ruin me--reputation, fortune, future! Everything!"
She did not answer him.
"Yes, that is going to be the result," he continued in his slow, husky voice. "Only one thing can save me."
"And that?"
He stared at her for a moment with wildly burning eyes. Then he wet his dry lips.
"That is for you to countermand this extra."
"You ask me to do that?"
"It is my only chance. I do."
"I believe you are out of your mind!" she cried.
"I believe I am!" he said hoarsely.
"Think just a moment, and you will see that what you ask is quite impossible. Just think a moment."
He was silent for a time. A tremor ran through him, his body stiffened.
"No, I do not ask it," he said. "I am not trying to excuse myself now, but when a thing falls so unexpectedly, so suddenly----" A choking at the throat stopped him. "If I have seemed to whimper, I take it back.
You have beaten me, Katherine. But I hope I can take defeat like a man."
She did not answer.
They continued gazing at one another. In the silence of the great house they could hear each other's agitated breathing. Into his dark face, now turned so gray, there crept a strange, drawn look--a look that sent a tingling through all her body.
"What is it?" she asked.
"To think," he exclaimed in a low, far-away voice, almost to himself, "that I have lost everything through you! Through you, through whom I might have gained everything!"
"Gained everything? Through me?" she repeated. "How?"
"I am sure I would have kept out of such things--as this--if, five years ago, you had said 'yes' instead of 'no'."
"Said yes?" she breathed.
"I think you would have kept me in the straight road. For I would not have dared to fall below your standards. For I"--he drew a deep, convulsive breath--"for I loved you, Katherine, better than anything in all the world!"
She trembled at the intensity of his voice.
"You loved me--like that?"
"Yes. And since I have lost you, and lost everything, there is perhaps no harm in my telling you something else. Only on that one night did I open my lips about love to you--but I have loved you through all the years since then. And ... and I still love you."
"You still love me?" she whispered.
"I still love you."
She stared at him.
"And yet all these months you have fought against me!"
"I have not fought against _you_," he said. "Somehow, I got started in this way, and I have fought to win--have fought against exposure, against defeat."
"And you still love me?" she murmured, still amazed.