Short Stories. Kyrle Bellew

      "'Could you forgive anything in me—anything I had kept from you?'

      "She'd an eager, pained look in her face, and she hardly breathed. I thought it was a foolish girl's question. Answered, 'Yes.'

      "There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel-path, and the shrill laughter of a little child.

      "'Tiens—Bebe—tiens.'"

      It was her mother's voice!

      "For a moment the girl seemed pondering—looking into the future or the past—I knew not which. But suddenly she staggered back, and clasping her hands over her face, cried out—'Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!'

      "It was the Past!!!

      "Harry, I'd sooner die a hundred deaths than feel again the pain that shot through my heart just then.

      "She fell and fainted on the grass.

      "I saw it all. I think there's murder in every man's soul on earth. I knelt over her for a moment. It was in mine then, I knew.

      "The horrid, damning, bitter truth, was plain. I thought my head would burst; blood spurted from my ​mouth and nose. I felt a stifling, suffocating, choking, in my throat; and, with a cry that would come out, I cursed her there and then. I know no more."

      His voice got very low and quiet; and he paused a long painful pause—thinking; then he spoke.

      "I think they came and found me there. I turned to look for her, but she was gone.

      "The moon was still bright, and beautiful. There was no wind and everything was still. I thought I'd waked up from a dream; but, as I passed my hand across my eyes, I felt there was something on it that wasn't there before.

      "It was a thin gold, wedding ring. It's there still, Harry, and she's—ah! God—"

      We'd left a shovel behind at the claim that evening. I went to fetch it, and as I crossed the creek, and stumbled through the ferns, a stifled heavy sob came down to me from where the hut lay in the quiet moonlight of that Christmas Eve.