Harrington knew what it was—what he must do. It was rude—the rudest possible awakening. It was the most poignant and shattering intrusion of a chaos upon a paradise. He must tell her. It was her right. Besides, he needed those reënforcements which slumbered in reserve in that palpitant beauty by his side. He must tell her and he did, not without flinching, but quite without mincing—that he would defend Adam John!
He had been holding her hand. It grew cold and limp in his. All at once it had fallen out of his grasp. He felt her body grow tense, and as if breaking from the spell of some nightmare whose horror had been slowly congealing her veins, she whispered in a hoarse chill of fear: "Henry . . . Henry! What have you been saying?"
She sat up and stared at him utterly incredulous, with an awed note in her voice. "Fight . . . fight my father?" Her face had grown very white, her lips were puckered until they showed no red at all. Her sweet mouth had become a wound that quivered as with an awful hurt. Henry's heart was melted entirely. It was so much more suffering than he felt it would be necessary to bring to her. He wanted to take her again into his arms and to console and reassure.
"Not fight him—no!" he argued wretchedly. "Merely defend"
But Billie's own keen intelligence perceived both a falsity in this distinction and that he did not perceive it—which made her suddenly wild at his obtuseness for supposing that he could attack Boland General without attacking John Boland; or that he could reflect upon him without laying the lash upon the quivering flesh of his daughter! The tears of an uncontrollable
