For a moment he hesitated. What she said was true. She had given large confidences and received little. Why should he not tell his name? Why, indeed, should he not tell her all? He was sure that it could not change her attitude toward him; he was sure that his trust would never be betrayed, and the weight of his secret was hanging heavy about his life. That strange human instinct which demands the right of confidence the privilege of confession, was becoming irresistibly strong within him.
“I have a reason for concealing my name,” he said at length. “I do not wish to tell the name until I can tell the reason also.”
“And when will that be, may I ask?” It was a respectful question, not a demand for information.
“Oh, perhaps the next time we chat together,” he laughed, anxious to shelve the matter for the moment. “Now, let us see these photographs.”
She sat on a stool beside his chair, passing up the photographs for his scrutiny. With each she had a word of comment, but Burton looked at them mechanically. They were nothing to him but strange faces, in which he felt only a reflected interest. At length she raised a photograph which she held a moment longer than usual. “This,” she said, “is a picture of my particular college chum—my best girl friend. She is pure gold.”
She placed the pasteboard in his fingers. His eyes wandered to the face, and then his head shot forward as though he had been magnetised. He instantly attempted to recover his composure, but his fingers trembled and his breath came hard. It was the face of Myrtle Vane!
“Where’er Endeavour bares her arm, And grapples with the Things To Be, At desk or counter, forge or farm, On veldt or prairie, land or sea, And men press onward, undismayed, The Empire Builder plies his trade.”
What explanation Burton made of his agitation he never quite remembered. He knew he had said something about a remarkable likeness to a friend of his, but he felt that his behaviour at best had had only a lame excuse. Kate, however, had accepted it with the frankness that had marked her attitude toward him since the day they first met, and had rattled on her tribute to Myrtle Vane, to every word of which Burton inwardly said amen. But when she mentioned that they still corresponded regularly, and that she expected a letter by the next mail, he found himself battling with conflicting emotions. It was plain that he must tell her all or nothing; either he must take her into his life or he must go out of hers. He knew that he loomed big in the world of this farmer’s daughter, and that when she next wrote to Myrtle she would tell about this Ray, her discovery. The name would excite Miss Vane’s interest, identification would surely come, sooner or later. And what would this girl from whom he had torn himself under the shadow of the law and who was in very reality more to him than existence itself—what would she say when she knew of his life as a fugitive from justice, a betrayer of his bondsman, whose regard for her had been so slight that he had deserted her under the fear of his own punishment—what would she say when she knew he had cast off all responsibility for the past and to-day was living in happiness, the trusted friend of her trusted friend? He saw his life crumbling about him like a house of cards. He saw only too plainly how his desertion of the girl he loved would cost him the friendship of the girl he so much admired.