Summer had returned triumphant to deck the favourite's path.
Randal Courteney marked it all gravely, without contempt. It was her
hour.
No word from her had reached him, but that night he would meet her face
to face. Through days and nights of troubled thought, the resolve had
grown within him. To-night it should bear fruit. He would not rest again
until he had seen her. For his peace of mind was gone. She was about to
throw herself away upon a man she did not love, and he felt that it was
laid upon him to stop the sacrifice. The burden of responsibility was
his. He had striven against this conviction, but it would not be denied.
From the days of young Eric Baron's tragedy onward, this woman had made
him as it were the star of her destiny. To repudiate the fact was
useless. She had, in her ungoverned, impulsive fashion, made him surety
for her soul.
The thought tormented him, but it held a strange attraction for him
also. If the story were true, and it was not in him to doubt it, it
touched him in a way that was wholly unusual. Popularity, adulation, had
been his portion for years. But this was different, this was personal--a
matter in which reputation, fame, had no part.
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