Lora Delane Porter eyed them grimly. It was the hour of her defeat, and
she knew it. Forces too strong for her were at work. Her grand attack,
the bringing of these two together that Ruth might confront Kirk in his
guilt, had recoiled upon her. The Old Guard had made their charge up
the hill, and it had failed. Victory had become a rout. With one speech
Steve had destroyed her whole plan of campaign.
She knew it was all over, that in another moment if she remained, she
would be compelled to witness the humiliating spectacle of Ruth in
Kirk's arms, stammering the words which intuition told her were even
now trembling on her lips. She knew Ruth. She could read her like a
primer. And her knowledge told her that she was about to capitulate,
that all her pride and resentment had been swept away, that she had
gone over to the enemy.
Elemental passions were warring against Lora Delane Porter, and she
bowed before them.
'Mr. Winfield,' she said sharply, her voice cutting the silence like a
knife, 'I beg your pardon. I seem to have made a mistake. Good night.'
Kirk did not answer.
'Good night, Ruth.'
Ruth made no sign that she had heard.
Mrs. Porter, grand in defeat, moved slowly to the door.
But even in the greatest women there is that germ of feminine curiosity
which cannot be wholly eliminated, that little grain of dust that
asserts itself and clogs the machinery. It had been Mrs. Porter's
intention to leave the room without a glance, her back defiantly toward
the foe. But, as she reached the door, there came from behind her a
sound of movement, a stifled cry, a little sound whose meaning she knew
too well.
She hesitated. She stood still, fighting herself. But the grain of dust
had done its work. For an instant she ceased to be a smoothly working
machine and became a woman subject to the dictates of impulse.
She turned.
Intuition had not deceived her. Ruth had gone over to the enemy. She
was in Kirk's arms, holding him to her, her face hidden against his
shoulder, for all the world as if Lora Delane Porter, her guiding
force, had ceased to exist.
Mrs. Porter closed the door and walked stiffly through the scented
night to where the headlights of her automobile cleft the darkness.
Birds, asleep in the trees, fluttered uneasily at the sudden throbbing
of the engine.
The White Hope slept. The noise of the departing car, which had roused
the birds, had made no impression on him. As Steve had said, dynamite
could not do it. He slumbered on, calmly detached, unaware of the
remarkable changes which, in the past twenty-four hours, had taken
place in his life. An epoch had ended and a new one begun, but he knew
it not.
And probably, if Kirk and Ruth, who were standing at his bedside,
watching him, had roused him and informed him of these facts, he would
have displayed little excitement. He had the philosophical temperament.
