He had saved himself. And he had saved Conniston's sister,
to love, to fight for, to protect. It had not been a Judas lie but a
lie with his heart and his soul and all the manhood in him behind it.
To have told the truth would have made him his own executioner, it
would have betrayed the dead Englishman who had given to him his name
and all that he possessed, and it would have dragged to a pitiless
grief the heart of a girl for whom the sun still continued to shine. No
regret rose before him now. He felt no shame. All that he saw was the
fight, the tremendous fight, ahead of him, his fight to make good as
Conniston, his fight to play the game as Conniston would have him play
it. The inspiration that had come to him as he stood facing the storm
from the western mountains possessed him again. He would go to the
river's end as he had planned to go before McDowell told him of Shan
Tung and Miriam Kirkstone. And he would not go alone. Mary Josephine
would go with him.
It was midnight when he rose from the big chair and went to his room.
The door was closed. He opened it and entered. Even as his hand groped
for the switch on the wall, his nostrils caught the scent of something
which was familiar and yet which should not have been there.
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