"Cherchez la femme?" repeated Tom, puffing unconsciously. "Pickle was a
good fellow, but he had the deuce of an eye for a girl. Do you remember--"
He stopped short, and saw the man and the photograph looking at each
other. Too late, he unhappily remembered that he had meant, and forgotten,
to take that photograph out of the room before he brought Harkless in. Now
he would have to leave it; and Helen Sherwood was not the sort of girl,
even in a flat presentment, to be continually thrown in the face of a man
who had lost her. And it always went hard, Tom reflected, with men who
stretched vain hands to Helen, only to lose her. But there was one, he
thought, whose outstretched hands might not prove so vain. Why couldn't
she have cared for John Harkless? Deuce take the girl, did she want to
marry an emperor? He looked at Harkless, and pitied him with an almost
tearful compassion. A feverish color dwelt in the convalescent's cheek;
the apathy that had dulled his eyes was there no longer; instead, they
burned with a steady fire. The image returned his unwavering gaze with
inscrutable kindness.
"You heard that Pickle shot himself, didn't you?" Meredith asked. There
was no answer; John did not hear him.
"Do you know that poor Jeny Haines killed himself, last March?" Tom said
sharply.
There was only silence in the room.
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