"His face was white. 'My God!' he said. 'I thought, for a while, we
had lost you!'
"Then I knew that he dared not be alone, and that I had him, whatever
happened."
NIGHT THE TWENTIETH.
ONE MAN ESCAPES.
Before continuing Foe's story, I should warn you not to be surprised
that hereabouts it takes on a somewhat different tone. I am trying
to give you the tale as he told it: and so much of it as related to
Santa, he told bravely and frankly, here and there with a thrill
somewhere deep beneath his voice, and exaltation on his face.
He was, in short, the Jack Foe of old days, opening out his heart to
me; and all the more the same because he was different. By this I
mean that never in life had I heard him speak in just that way,
simply because never in life had he brought me this kind of emotion,
to confess it; but, granted the woman and the love, here (I felt) was
the old Jack opening his heart to me. It rejuvenated his whole
figure, too, and, in a way, ennobled it. I forgot--or rather, I no
longer saw--the change in him which had given me that secondary shock
when he walked into the room.
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