He was a bad influence to our boys in Paris, and there was
but one course left open to us. We have no account of his subsequent
movements. With his dismissal from the service, he ceased to be an
object of concern to us.
Alix did not destroy this letter. She locked it away in a drawer
of her desk. She had made up her mind to confront Thane with this
official communication. It was an ordeal she dreaded. Her true
reason for refusing to see him was clear to her if to no one else:
she hated the thought of hurting him! Moreover, she was strangely
oppressed by the fear that she would falter at the crucial moment
and that her half-guarded defences would go down before the assault.
She knew his strength far better than she knew his weakness. She
had had an illuminating example of his power. Was she any stronger
now than on that never-to-be-forgotten night?...She put off the
evil hour.
And on the same third day of renunciation, she had a letter from
David Strong. She wept a little over it, and driven finally by a
restlessness such as she had never known before, feverishly dressed
herself, and set forth late in the afternoon for a long walk in
the open air. She took to the leaf-strewn woodland roads, and there
was a definite goal in mind.
II
Courtney remembered Rosabel Vick.
"I guess I'd better call her up," he said to himself. "I ought
to have done it several days ago.
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