When Hal first saw her old friend she was almost too shocked for words at the swift change in her. Lorraine tried hard to smile cheerful y, but she could not hide any longer from herself how seriously ill she had grown, and she felt it useless to try and hide it from Hal.
Jean had not told her of the letter, and she knew nothing of Hal's coming until she was actual y in the house. When she saw her, she could have cried for gladness.
"How good of you, Hal... how good of you!" she breathed, and Hal, on her knees by the couch, in an unsteady voice replied:
"Oh, why didn't you send for me sooner? Why didn't you let me come here instead of going to Norway?"
An hour later she went out to the little post office, and wired to London to know if she might remain away for a week.
It was evident Lorraine was very ill indeed and needing the utmost care.
During the day she seemed to grow steadily worse, and she could not bear Hal out of her sight.
"I don't know whether you are shocked or not," she said to her once,
"but if everything goed al right I shall not regret what I have done for one moment. I wanted something more real for the rest of my life than I have had in its beginning." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I wanted his child to live for."
With a caressing hand on the sick woman's, Hal asked in a low voice:
"Why isn't he here taking care of you now? Where is you child's father?"
A swift surprise passed through Lorraine's eyes, as if it had not occured to her Hal would not know the truth. Then she said, very softly, "Alymer."
"Ah!"
The exclamation seemed wrung from Hal unconsciously, and after it her lips grew strangely rigid.
"Hal," Lorraine said weakly, "I've loved Alymer almost ever since I first saw him. I swore I would not harm his career, and I have not. I wil not in future. But the child is his, and I thank God for it. I do not believe an il egitimate child with a devoted mother is any worse off than the legitimate child with a selfish, unloving one. That there is love enough matters the most. What can any child have better than a life's devotion?"
Later on she said:
"This is his great week, Hal. In his last letter he tel s me his big chance has come at last through Sir Philip Hal . We always hoped it would. It is the big libel case, and if Sir Philip chooses he can let him take a very prominent part. He wil , I am sure of it. He is very interested in him, and he has given him this chance on purpose. Flip thinks it wil lead to a great deal; and of course if so it is splendid for him."
Hal said very little. She was overcome at the revelation Lorraine had made, and seemed quite unable to grasp it.
Meanwhile she waited fearfully for the crisis the doctor had told her was impending. She was expecting him to cal again, and was relieved when at last he arrived bringing a pleasant-faced French nurse with him.
She relinquished her post then, and waited for him anxiously downstairs. When he came he told her he must have another opinion at once, and Hal knew that something serious was wrong, and that he feared the worst.
The next morning, when she saw Lorraine again, she understood that they had saved her life, but probably only for a few days at the most.
Lorraine was almost too weak to speak, but she looked into Hal's eyes, and in her own there was a dumb imploring. Hal leant down and murmured:
"What is it, Lorry?... Do you want Alymer?"
"Yes," was the faint whisper. "I feel it is the end. I want so much to see him once more."
"I will go to London myself, and fetch him," Hal said, and a look of rest crept into the dying woman's eyes.
So it happened that the day before the great libel case Hal stood in Hermon's chambers, and delivered her message.
It was a tense moment - a moment of warring instincts, warring inclinations, conflicting fates. It was surely the very irony of ironies, that within sight of his goal, with al this woman had manoeuvred to give him almost in his hands, she should be the one to step suddenly between him and the realisation of everything his life had striven for.
To fail Sir Philip Hall at the eleventh hour, under such circumstance, could only mean an irreparable disaster. He would lose, as far as his profession was concerned, in every single way. It would strike a blow at his progress, from which it might never wholly recover.
No wonder, confronted with the sudden demand life had flung at him, he stood stock still, with rigid face, almost overcome by the swift sword-thrust of fate, and made no reply.
Since Hal told him, in a few, rather abrupt words, her story, he had scarcely looked at her. When she first entered his room so unexpectedly, his eyes had searched her face as if he would read instantly what she had come for?... what she had learnt?... Before hers, his gaze fell.
"I have come from Lorraine," she said, and he understood that she knew all.
A dull red crept over his face and neck, and then died away, leaving him of an ashy paleness. He was standing by his desk, and he reached out one hand and rested it on some books, gripping the backs of them with a grip that made his knuckles stand out like white knots. He did not ask Hal to sit down. Commonplace amenities died in the stress of the moment.
She stood in the middle of the room, very straight and very stil . In a close-fitting travelling-dress she looked unusual y slim, almost boyish, and something about her attitude rather suggested a youthful knight, sword in hand, come with vengeance to the Transgressor. Yet, even in his shame and stunned perplexity, Hermon lost no shred of dignity.
He towered above her, with bend head, rigid, white face, grave, downcast eyes, and in spite of every reproach her attitude seemed to hurl at him, het yet wore the look of nobility that was his birtright.
"When do you think I should go?" he asked at last, with difficulty.
"We ought to cross to-night."
"To-night! - I - I - have a very important case to-morrow. It wil not last long. It matters a great deal."
"I know," was the short, uncompromising answer.
He looked up with a swift glance of inquiry. Then he said quietly:
"Do you know that it may wreck my future to leave London to-night?"
"Yes," said Hal. "I know."
"And after al Lorraine did not help me to this hour of success, am I to throw away my chance?"
"Lorraine is dying. Her dying wish is to see you once more. Is it necessary to discuss anything else?"
Again there was silence between them - silence so intense, so poignant, it was like a live thing present in the room. Through the double windows came a far-off, muffled sound of the traffic in the Strand, but it seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the life of that quiet room. It dit not disturb the silence, in which one could almost hear pulse-beats. It belonged to another world.
Once Alymer raised his head and looked hard into her face. In his eyes there was an expression of utter hopelessness. She had not spoken any word of reproach or scorn, yet everything about her as she stood there erect and passionless, and without one grain of sympathy for his struggle, told him that, just as far as her natural broadness al owed her to condemn any one, she condemned him.
For a moment a sort of savage recklessness seized him. He felt suddenly he was stranded high-and-dry on a barren rock, with nothing at all any more in his world but his profession. He had lost al hope of ever winning Hal, which seemed to be al hope of anything worth having.
Nothing remained but the hollow interest of a great name, and the lust of power. He had it in his mind for those brief, passionate moments, because he had lost al else, to insist upon taking his chance.
Even one day's grace might save him. The trial would perhaps last not more than two, but in any case, a wire reaching him in the middle, which he could show to Sir Philip, might mean al the difference between success and failure. The wire could be worded to hide what was truly involved, and the plea of a life-and-death urgency would set him free without any awkward questioning.
He glanced up to speak, and once again Hal's attitude arrested him.
She looked so young, so fresh, so true, so vaguely splendid, in spite of the rigid lips that seemed to have closed down tightly upon al she must have suffered in the last fort-eight hours.
She was not looking at him now, but, with her head thrown back a little, she gazed silently and fatefully at the clock on his mantelpiece.
And something about her called to him, with the cal ing of the great, mysterious things, a calling that shamed and scorned that spirit of savage recklessness; that swift, relentless lust of power.
"What is anything in the world,' it seemed to cry, "compared to being true to one's friend; true to one's word; true to one's love?"
He saw suddenly that in any case success and triumph would bring him little enough to gladden his heart; that whichever way he turned was gloom and darkness; that in that gloom a possible ray of light stil linger, if he could keep always the consciousness that, at the most critical hour of his life, he had rung true.
He raised his eyes suddenly, and straightened himself.
"What time does the next train leave?" he said. "I am coming."