"
Hazen stood silent, his eye glistening, his hand almost outstretched.
Harper thought he would yield; the offer must have struck him as generous
and very tempting--a good excuse for a hot-headed man to withdraw from a
very doubtful adventure. But he did not know Hazen. This latter advanced
his hand and squeezed Ransom's warmly, but his answer, when he was ready
to give one, conveyed no intention of a change of mind.
"Will your thousands amount to a clean million?" he smiled. "That is the
amount, I believe, bequeathed by your wife to Mr. Auchincloss. Nothing
less will suffice. Yet I thank you, Ransom."
The latter bowed and fell a little behind the others. The struggle in his
mind had been severe; it was severe yet; he did not know but that it was
his duty to stop this Hazen from his intended action by force. He was not
sure but that the onus of this whole desperate undertaking would yet fall
upon him. Certainly it would fall upon his conscience if the end was
fatal. He had had proof of that in the long night of wakeful misery he
had just passed; a night in which he had faced the furies; in which this
inexorable question had forced itself upon him despite every effort on
his part to evade it.
Why had he, a humane man, consented to this attempt on the part of the
devoted Hazen? That his mind might be free to mourn his beautiful young
bride whose fatal and mysterious secret he was still as far from knowing
as in the hour he turned to welcome her to their first home and found her
fled from his arms and heart? Or had this suspense, this feeling of
standing now, as never before, at the opening door of fate, a deeper
significance, a more active meaning? Was this meditated test a crucial
one, because it opened to him the only possible releasement of soul and
conscience to the undivided care of one who had no other refuge in life
save that offered by his devotion? The horror of this self-probing was
still upon him as he followed Hazen's slight and virile figure across the
rocks, but it fled as he felt the spray of the tossing waters dash its
chilling reminder in his face.
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