He stopped and, turning, looked back. He saw the girl bend down and
put a hand on Wallie Sayre's shoulder, and the boy's face upturned and
looking into hers. He shook himself and went on. After all, that was
best. He felt no anger now. She deserved better than to be used to help
a man work out his salvation. She deserved youth, and joyousness, and
the forgetfulness that comes with time. She was already forgetting.
He smiled again as he went on up the street, but his hands as he
buttoned his overcoat were shaking.
It was shortly after that that he met the rector, Mr. Oglethorpe. He
passed him quickly, but he was conscious that the clergyman had stopped
and was staring after him. Half an hour later, sitting in the empty
smoker of the train, he wondered if he had not missed something there.
Perhaps the church could have helped him, a good man's simple belief in
right and wrong. He was wandering in a gray no-man's land, without faith
or compass.
David had given him the location of Bassett's apartment house, and he
found it quickly. He was in a state of nervous irritability by that
time, for the sense of being a fugitive was constantly stressed in the
familiar streets by the danger of recognition. It was in vain that
he argued with himself that only the police were interested in his
movements, and the casual roundsman not at all. He found himself shying
away from them like a nervous horse.
But if he expected any surprise from Bassett he was disappointed. He
greeted him as if he had seen him yesterday, and explained his lack of
amazement in his first words.
"Doctor Livingstone telephoned me. Sit down, man, and let me look at
you. You've given me more trouble than any human being on earth."
"Sorry," Dick said awkwardly, "I seem to have a faculty of involving
other people in my difficulties."
"Want a drink?"
"No, thanks. I'll smoke, if you have any tobacco. I've been afraid to
risk a shop."
Bassett talked cheerfully as he found cigarettes and matches. "The old
boy had a different ring to his voice to-night. He was going down pretty
fast, Livingstone; was giving up the fight. But I fancy you've given
him a new grip on the earth." When they were seated, however, a sort of
awkwardness developed. To Dick, Bassett had been a more or less shadowy
memory, clouded over with the details and miseries of the flight. And
Bassett found Dick greatly altered. He was older than he remembered him.
The sort of boyishness which had come with the resurrection of his early
identity had gone, and the man who sat before him was grave, weary, and
much older. But his gaze was clear and direct.