Porter's
intention to leave the room without a glance, her back defiantly toward
the foe. But, as she reached the door, there came from behind her a
sound of movement, a stifled cry, a little sound whose meaning she knew
too well.
She hesitated. She stood still, fighting herself. But the grain of dust
had done its work. For an instant she ceased to be a smoothly working
machine and became a woman subject to the dictates of impulse.
She turned.
Intuition had not deceived her. Ruth had gone over to the enemy. She
was in Kirk's arms, holding him to her, her face hidden against his
shoulder, for all the world as if Lora Delane Porter, her guiding
force, had ceased to exist.
Mrs. Porter closed the door and walked stiffly through the scented
night to where the headlights of her automobile cleft the darkness.
Birds, asleep in the trees, fluttered uneasily at the sudden throbbing
of the engine.
Chapter XVI
The White-Hope Link
The White Hope slept. The noise of the departing car, which had roused
the birds, had made no impression on him. As Steve had said, dynamite
could not do it. He slumbered on, calmly detached, unaware of the
remarkable changes which, in the past twenty-four hours, had taken
place in his life. An epoch had ended and a new one begun, but he knew
it not.
And probably, if Kirk and Ruth, who were standing at his bedside,
watching him, had roused him and informed him of these facts, he would
have displayed little excitement.
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