“And now, as though this were to be the end, let me take my last farewell of you. I have loved you, Paula, loved you with my heart, my mind and my soul. You have been my angel of inspiration and the source of all my comfort. I kneel before you in gratitude, and I stand above you in blessing. May every pang I suffer this hour, redound to you in some sweet happiness hereafter. I do not quarrel with my fate, I only ask God to spare you from its shadow. And He will. Love will flow back upon your young life, and in regions where our eye now fails to pierce, you will taste every joy which your generous heart once thought to bestow on
XL
Half-Past Seven
“I would it were midnight, Hal, and all well.”
Henry IV
The library was dim; Bertram, who had felt the oppressive influence of the great empty room, had turned down the lights, and was now engaged in pacing the floor, with restless and uneven steps, asking himself a hundred questions, and wishing with all the power of his soul, that Mr. Sylvester would return, and by his appearance cut short a suspense that was fast becoming unendurable.
He had just returned from his third visit to the front door, when the curtain between him and the hall was gently raised, and Paula glided in and stood before him. She was dressed for the street, and her face where the light touched it, shone like marble upon which has fallen the glare of a lifted torch.
“Paula!” burst from the young man’s lips in surprise.
“Hush!” said she, her voice quavering with an emotion that put to defiance all conventionalities, “I want you to take me to the place where Mr. Sylvester is gone. He is in danger; I know it, I feel it. I dare not leave him any longer alone. I might be able to save him if—if he meditates anything that—” she did not try to say what, but drew nearer to Bertram and repeated her request. “You will take me, won’t you?”
He eyed her with amazement, and a shudder seized his own strong frame. “No,” cried he, “I cannot take you; you do not know what you ask; but I will go myself if you apprehend anything serious. I remember where it is. I studied the address too closely, to readily forget it.”
“You shall not go without me,” returned Paula with steady decision. “If the danger is what I fear, no one else can save him. I must go,” she added, with passionate importunity as she saw him still looking doubtful. “Darkness and peril are nothing to me in comparison with his safety. He holds my life in his hand,” she softly whispered, “and what will not one do for his life!” Then quickly, “If you go without me I shall follow with Aunt Belinda. Nothing shall keep me in the house tonight.”
He felt the uselessness of further objection, yet he ventured to say, “The place where he has gone is one of the worst in the city; a spot which men hesitate to enter after dark. You don’t know what you ask in begging me to take you there.”
“I do, I realize everything.”
With a sudden awe of the great love which he thus beheld embodied before him, Bertram bowed his head and moved towards the door. “I may consider it wise to obtain the guidance of a policeman through the quarter into which we are about to venture. Will you object to that?”
“No,” was her quick reply, “I object to nothing but delay.”
And with a last look about the room, as if some sensation of farewell were stirring in her breast, she laid her hand on Bertram’s arm, and together they hurried away into the night.
Book V
Woman’s Love
XLI
The Work of an Hour
“Base is the slave that pays.”
Henry V
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Congreve
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
Mr. Sylvester upon leaving the bank, had taken his usual route up town. But after an aimless walk of a few blocks, he suddenly paused, and with a quiet look about him, drew from his pocket the small slip of paper which Bertram had laid on his table the night before, and hurriedly consulted its contents. Instantly an irrepressible exclamation escaped him, and he turned his face to the heavens with the look of one who recognizes the just providence of God. The name which he had just read, was that of the old lover of Jacqueline Japha, Roger Holt, and the address given, was 63 Baxter Street.
Twilight comes with different aspects to the broad avenues of the rich, and the narrow alleys of the poor. In the reeking slums of Baxter Street, poetry would have had to search long for the purple glamour that makes day’s dying hour fair in open fields and perfumed chambers. Even the last dazzling gleam of the sun could awaken no sparkle from the bleared windows of the hideous tenement houses that reared their blank and disfigured walls toward the west. The chill of the night blast and the quick dread that follows in the steps of coming darkness, were all that could enter these regions, unless it was the stealthy shades of vice and disease.
Mr. Sylvester standing before the darkest and most threatening of the many dark and threatening houses that cumbered the street, was a sight to draw more than one head from the neighboring windows. Had it been earlier, he would have found himself surrounded by a dozen ragged and importunate children; had it been later, he would have
