CHAPTER VII

SECRETS

There was a short silence. Brice looked anxiously through thegathering unlitness at the dimly seen face so near to his own.He could not guess, for the life of him, whether the small child wassilent because she refused to tell him what he sought soeagerly to know, or whether she was still fighting to controlher voice.

As he sat gazing down at her, there was something so tiny, sofragile, so helplessly trustful about her, that it wentstraight to the man's heart. He had played and schemed andrisked life itself for this crucial hour, for this hour whenhe should have swept aside the girl's possible suspicions andenlisted her complete sympathy for himself and could make hertrust him and feel keen remorse for the treatment he hadreceived.

Yes--he had achieved all this. And he had done infinitelymore. He had awakened inside her heart a sense of loneliness andof need for some one in whom she might confide.

He had done all this, had Gavin Brice. And, though he wasnot a vain man, yet he knew he had done it cleverly. But,somehow--even as he waited to see if the hour for fullconfidences were indeed ripe--he was not able to feel the thrillof exultation which should belong to the winner of a hard-foughtduel. Instead, to his amazement, he was aware of a growing senseof shame, of disgust at having used such weapons against any woman,--especially against this girl whose yellowness of soul and ofpurpose he could no longer doubt.

Then, through the silence and above the soft lap-lap-lap ofwater against the idly drifting boat's side, Claire drew adeep breath. She threw back her drooping shoulders and satup, facing the man. And in the dawn, Gavin could see theflash of resolve in her great eyes.