Page:Restless Earth.djvu/68

“Look!” he cried, holding the paper towards her with shaking hands. “Look! The earthquake! Napier and Hastings have been shaken down and burned!”

Patricia raised her pencilled brows in cleverly-assumed surprise.

“Well?” she asked. Then she smiled and affected to understand. “No, that’s too transparent, Jimmy. I refuse to be saved from myself at this late hour.”

Harley stared at her wildly.

“Napier and Hastings—shaken down and burned!” he repeated. “Can’t you understand? That earthquake———”

Patricia became grave.

“Didn’t you know?” she asked, frowning at him with feigned incredulity.

“Didn’t I know?” he echoed, looking at her as though she were bereft of her senses. “Didn’t I know?”

“I thought we were tacitly agreed not to mention it—to-night, Jimmy. I thought you knew———” she lied.

Harley caught his breath. Horrified amazement drove him back a pace.

“Pat!” he gasped. “You can’t think like that? You can’t think that I would have allowed this—this———” he swept his arms wide to include the house and all that it held, “if I had known? If I had known that Grace was—lying over there—dead?”

She moved towards him, her hands held before her in pleading, her eyes tender.

“When a man is in love, Jimmy———” she began.

Harley backed away from her, staring wildly, striking the reaching hands from him with sudden loathing.

“Don’t touch me!” he snarled, realising the degradation she imputed to him and instantly crediting the unpleasant tales he had heard about this