Our only chance now is that she
should listen to you--that you should make her see the harm
her silence may do."
Darrow uttered a protesting exclamation. "It's all too
preposterous--what you suggest! I can't, at any rate, appeal
to her on such a ground as that!"
Anna laid her hand on his arm. "Appeal to her on the ground
that I'm almost Owen's mother, and that any estrangement
between you and him would kill me. She knows what he is--
she'll understand. Tell her to say anything, do anything,
she wishes; but not to go away without speaking, not to
leave THAT between us when she goes!"
She drew back a step and lifted her face to his, trying to
look into his eyes more deeply than she had ever looked; but
before she could discern what they expressed he had taken
hold of her hands and bent his head to kiss them.
"You'll see her? You'll see her?" she entreated; and he
answered: "I'll do anything in the world you want me to."
XXVI
Darrow waited alone in the sitting-room.
No place could have been more distasteful as the scene of
the talk that lay before him; but he had acceded to Anna's
suggestion that it would seem more natural for her to summon
Sophy Viner than for him to go in search of her. As his
troubled pacings carried him back and forth a relentless
hand seemed to be tearing away all the tender fibres of
association that bound him to the peaceful room.
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