Tear them up, tear them up!"

"Why, Karl."

"Tear them up, now, at once. I shall never look at them again. Do it.
What does it matter? I am only Herman Stueler. Now!"

With shaking fingers she tipped the tattered sheets, and the tears ran
over and down her cheeks. It would not have hurt her more had she torn
the man's heart in twain. He watched her with fevered eyes till the
last scrap floated into her lap.

"Now, toss them into the grate and light a match."

And when he saw the reflected glare on the opposite wall, he sank
deeper into the pillow. The woman was openly sobbing. She came back
to his side, knelt, and laid her lips upon his hand. There was now
only a dim white speck on the horizon, and with that strange sea-magic
the hull suddenly dipped down, and naught but a trail of smoke
remained. Then this too vanished. Breitmann withdrew his hand, but he
laid it upon her head.

"I am a broken man, Hildegarde; and in my madness I have been something
of a rascal. But for all that, I had big dreams, but thus they go, the
one in flames and the other out to sea." He stroked her hair. "Will
you take what is left? Will you share with me the outlaw, be the wife
of a disappointed outcast? Will you?"

"Would I not follow you to any land? Would I not share with you any
miseries? Have you ever doubted the strength of my love?"

"Knowing that there was another?"

"Knowing even that."

"It is I who am little and you who are great. Hildegarde, we'll have
our friend Ferraud seek a priest this afternoon and square accounts."

Her head dropped to the coverlet.

After that there was no sound except the crisp metallic rattle of the
palms in the freshening breeze.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Splendid Hazard, by Harold MacGrath

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