I know this. I hated
Lucas--he was a poor thing and you know what he did to me. But I never
thought of killing him. That wouldn't have helped matters. It was too
late."

"What about--that?" David asked, not looking at him. When Dick did not
immediately reply David glanced at him, to find his face set and pained.

"Perhaps we'd better not go into that now," David said hastily. "It's
natural that the readjustments will take time."

"We'll have to go into it. It's the hardest thing I have to face."

"It's not dead, then?"

"No," Dick said slowly. "It's not dead, David. And I'd better bring it
into the open. I've fought it to the limit by myself. It's the one thing
that seems to have survived the shipwreck. I can't argue it down or
think it down."

"Maybe, if you see Elizabeth--"

"I'd break her heart, that's all."

He tried to make David understand. He told in its sordid details his
failure to kill it, his attempts to sink memory and conscience in
Chicago and their failure, the continued remoteness of Elizabeth and
what seemed to him the flesh and blood reality of the other woman. That
she was yesterday, and Elizabeth was long ago.

"I can't argue it down," he finished. "I've tried to, desperately. It's
a--I think it's a wicked thing, in a way. And God knows all she ever got
out of it was suffering. She must loathe the thought of me."

David was compelled to let it rest there. He found that Dick was
doggedly determined to see Beverly Carlysle. After that, he didn't know.
No man wanted to surrender himself for trial, unless he was sure
himself of whether he was innocent or guilty. If there was a reasonable
doubt--but what did it matter one way or the other? His place was gone,
as he'd made it, gone if he was cleared, gone if he was convicted.

"I can't come back, David. They wouldn't have me."

After a silence he asked:

"How much is known here? What does Elizabeth know?"

"The town knows nothing. She knows a part of it. She cares a great deal,
Dick. It's a tragedy for her."

"Shall you tell her I have been here?"

"Not unless you intend to see her."

But Dick shook his head.

"Even if other things were the same I haven't a right to see her, until
I've got a clean slate."

"That's sheer evasion," David said, almost with irritation.

"Yes," Dick acknowledged gravely. "It is sheer evasion."

"What about the police?" he inquired after a silence. "I was registered
at Norada. I suppose they traced me?"