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Updated: May 16, 2025
Morrell cautiously placed a stool nearby, and mounted it so he could see into the room. For several minutes he watched. Then his hand stole to his pocket. He produced a revolver. Blinded by the light, Keith stood for a barely appreciable moment in the wrecked doorway. Sansome, startled by the crash, relaxed his efforts. Nan thrust him from her so strongly that he staggered back.
At first Keith's whole being was filled with rage. His mind whirled with plans for revenge. On the morrow he would hunt down Morrell and Sansome. At the thought of what he would do to them, his teeth clamped and his muscles stiffened. Then he became wholly preoccupied with Nan's narrow escape. His quick mind visualized a hundred possibilities suppose he had gone on Durkee's expedition?
He had, at the sound of her entrance, lighted the tea kettle; and as she came in he smiled up at her brightly. "You see," he cried gayly, "I am doing your task for you! I have the lamp all lit!" She paid no attention to this, but advanced two steps into the room. "Which side are you on, anyway?" she asked abruptly and a little harshly. Sansome raised his eyebrows in faint and fastidious surprise.
Ben Sansome was the one exception to the first part of the above statement. Her gentle but obvious withdrawals from his advances piqued his conceit. Ben was a spoiled youth, with plenty of money; and he had always been a spoiled youth, with plenty of money. Why he had come to San Francisco no one knew.
Many people were abroad, but Keith noticed that there seemed to be no idlers; every one appeared to be going somewhere in particular. After a short stroll they entered the Empire, which, Sansome explained, was the most stylish and frequented gambling place in town, a sort of evening club for the well-to-do and powerful.
Her anxiety for Keith's safety relieved, her whole reaction was indignantly toward Sansome. "I'm sorry to have you go," she said, with a feeling that other circumstances could not have called out, "I don't know what I'd have done without you!" Sansome's sensitive intuitions thrilled to the feeling. "Your husband is here to take care of you now," he murmured. "I must be off."
She turned away, distinctly uneasy. Yet so skilfully had he woven, his illusion of dependence on her that she shook it off with a tender and maternal smile. "Poor boy," she murmured. "He is so unhappy and alone!" Sansome was an accomplished equestrian. Finding that Nan knew nothing whatever about riding, he procured her a gentle horse, and took the greatest trouble and pleasure in teaching her.
Can't you send a note around to Ben and see if he can't get you there and back?" This came to be a regular thing. If Sansome did not happen to be there, he was sent for. And his engagements were never such that he failed to accept. He and Keith called each other by their given names; but even after a close intimacy had been established, he never addressed Nan by hers.
It was just about time I got away." Arrived at the hotel, Sansome said good-bye, but Keith would have none of it. "No, no!" he cried. "You must come in, now you've come so far! I want you to meet my wife; she'll be delighted!" And Sansome, whose celebrated social tact had been slightly obscured by his potations, finally consented.
But Nan did not in the slightest degree respond to the lightness of his tone. Her own was cold and detached. "I do not know how to class you," she said. "But I asked you a question." Sansome arose to his feet again. His manner now became sympathetic, but into it had crept the least hint of resentment, "I don't understand your mood" he told her. "You are overwrought."
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