"
"Good!" she said in the soft, purring tone which had made him think of
her as a beautiful tigress, when their life together lay before them. "I
_will_ be kind, very kind, if only you'll prove that you really love me.
You never have proved it yet."
"Haven't I? I thought I had, often--to-day, even----"
"Oh! don't let's go back to that. I can't bear to think of it. We
weren't ourselves--either of us. If I was cross, forgive me, dear."
"I deserved it all," he said, pressing her against his side. "Now you're
making me a man again."
"You must be a man--a strong man--if you want me to love you as I once
did, and as I _can_ love. Oh, and I can--I can love! You don't know yet
how much."
"What shall I have to do?" he asked. "Do you mean anything in
particular, or----"
"Yes, I mean something in particular."
"I'll do it, darling, whatever it may be. I feel the strength."
She wrapped him in her arms and clung to him, talking softly, with her
lips against his hollowed cheek, so that her breath fluttered softly
past it with each half-whispered word.
"That's a promise," she said. "I won't let you break it. But you won't
want to break it. I'll love you so much--enough to make up for
everything. Enough to keep you from remembering those lights over
there."
"They're nothing to me," he assured her. "I don't believe I'll ever want
to see them again. There are other places where I can do better than at
Monte Carlo. Baccarat's a safer game than roulette or trente et
quarante, I begin to think, and I could adapt the system----"
"Never mind the system now! You'll have to go back to Monte to-morrow to
get your eighty pounds, and a cheque cashed for Mary Grant--a big one,
I hope.
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