The slow pulsing flow of the miner's voice, the absence of all oaths or justifying gesture, froze Pratt into immobility and thrilled Serviss with joy, for he, too, perceived that every word came from the heart of a very determined and very dangerous man.
Clarke started forward. "You wrong me! Everything I have done has been for their good--for the good of the world."
Lambert stopped him with a gesture. "Right here you quit, my friend. I don't question your good intentions, but I'm sick of the whole crazy business, and so is Julia. Why, good God, man! she looks ten years older since she left the valley. You've been nothing but a curse to her and the girl from the very start, and here is where your trail forks."
The preacher's hollow cheeks were ashen gray and his throat thick with passion as he cried: "You can't do that! You must not separate us. I love her--she is mine! The spirit forces have promised her to me. They will resent your interference, they will over-ride your puny opposition."
"I take the consequences. They go and you stay!"
Clarke turned to Morton in a frenzy, his eyes flaming, his lips dry and contorted. "I see your hand in this! You stand there silent, but you are the machinator of this plot. You are stealing her away--"
"Be quiet!" commanded Morton, with a gesture towards the stairway. "Don't you see them coming?"
Viola, fully dressed, and breathless with eagerness to flee, was hurriedly descending.
As she neared him, Clarke cried out, with lamentable, despairing wail: "Viola, you are leaving me!"
She gave him one awed, pitying backward glance and passed on, hurrying as if to escape his outspread hand, swift to outrun the inevitable tragic shadow of his faith.
For an instant he reeled back against the wall, then sprang to follow, but the young scientist intervened and thrust him back.
"Keep to your own trail," he sternly said, and as he opened the door for the girl, she seemed to pass at once into the sunlit spring-time world of common life.