"This John Keith?"
She shook her head. "No. I was away at school for many years. I don't
remember him."
"But he knew you--that is, he had seen you," said Keith. "He used to
talk to me about you in those days when he was helpless and dying. He
said that he was sorry for you, and that only because of you did he
ever regret the justice he brought upon your father. You see I speak
his words. He called it justice. He never weakened on that point. You
have probably never heard his part of the story."
"No."
The one word forced itself from her lips. She was expecting him to go
on, and waited, her eyes never for an instant leaving his face.
He did not repeat the story exactly as he had told it to McDowell. The
facts were the same, but the living fire of his own sympathy and his
own conviction were in them now. He told it purely from Keith's point
of view, and Miriam Kirkstone's face grew whiter, and her hands grew
tense again, as she listened for the first time to Keith's own version
of the tragedy of the room in which they were sitting. And then he
followed Keith up into that land of ice and snow and gibbering Eskimos,
and from that moment he was no longer Keith but spoke with the lips of
Conniston.
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