As Mary Josephine came toward him, her arms reaching out to him, her
face dead white, he stretched out a restraining hand, and said,
"Please wait, Mary Josephine!"
Something stopped her--the strangeness of his voice, the terrible
hardness of his face, gray and blood-stained, the something appalling
and commanding in the way he had spoken. He passed her quickly on his
way to the telephone. Her lips moved; she tried to speak; one of her
hands went to her throat. He was calling Miriam Kirkstone's number! And
now she saw that his hands, too, were bleeding. There came the murmur
of a voice in the telephone. Someone answered. And then she heard him
say,
"SHAN TUNG IS DEAD!"
That was all. He hung up the receiver and turned toward her. With a
little cry she moved toward him.
"DERRY--DERRY--"
He evaded her and pointed to the big chair in front of the fireplace.
"Sit down, Mary Josephine."
She obeyed him. Her face was whiter than he had thought a living face
could be, And then, from the beginning to the end, he told her
everything. Mary Josephine made no sound, and in the big chair she
seemed to crumple smaller and smaller as he confessed the great lie to
her, from the hour Conniston and he had traded identities in the little
cabin on the Barren.
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