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"Are you sure?" raising her dark eyes, "that you mean to be kind?" "Yes, sure," he said harshly. "Go on." "You are a little rough with me; a-almost insolent--" "I--I have to be. Good God! Alixe, do you think this is nothing to me?--this wretched mess we have made of life! Do you think my roughness and abruptness comes from anything but pity?--pity for us both, I tell you. Do you think I can remain unmoved looking on the atrocious punishment you have inflicted on yourself?--tethered to--to _that_!--for life!--the poison of the contact showing in your altered voice and manner!--in the things you laugh at, in the things you live for--in the twisted, misshapen ideals that your friends set up on a heap of nuggets for you to worship? Even if we've passed through the sea of mire, can't we at least clear the filth from our eyes and see straight and steer straight to the anchorage?" She had covered her pallid face with her muff; he bent forward, his hand on the arm of her chair. "Alixe, was there nothing to you, after all? Was it only a tinted ghost that was blown into my bungalow that night--only a twist of shredded marsh mist without substance, without being, without soul?--to be blown away into the shadows with the next and stronger wind--and again to drift out across the waste places of the world? I thought I knew a sweet, impulsive comrade of flesh and blood; warm, quick, generous, intelligent--and very, very young--too young and spirited, perhaps, to endure the harness which coupled her with a man who failed her--and failed himself. "That she has made another--and perhaps more heart-breaking mistake, is bitter for me, too--because--because--I have not yet forgotten. And even if I ceased to remember, the sadness of it must touch me. But I have not forgotten, and because I have not, I say to you, anchor! and hold fast. Whatever _he_ does, whatever you suffer, whatever happens, steer straight on to the anchorage. Do you understand me?" Her gloved hand, moving at random, encountered his and closed on it convulsively. "Do you understand?" he repeated. "Y-es, Phil." Head still sinking, face covered with the silvery fur, the tremors from her body set her hand quivering on his. Heart-sick, he forbore to ask for the explanation; he knew the real answer, anyway--whatever she might say--and he understood that any game in that house was Ruthven's game, and the guests his guests; and that Gerald was only one of
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