He had once heard a man say, "I feel as though I wanted
to crawl into a hole and die." That was the way he felt now, for to be
beaten in the game which you have played like a man yourself and have
been fouled into an unchallenged defeat, without the voice of the umpire,
is a fate which has smothered the soul of better men than Crozier.
Mona's voice stopped him. "Do not go, Shiel," she urged gently. "No,
you must not go--I want fair-play from you, if nothing else. You must
play the game with me. I want justice. I have to say some things I had
no chance to say before, and I want to hear some things I have a right to
hear. Indeed, you must play the game."
He drew himself up. Not to be a sportsman, not to play the game--to
accuse him of this would have brought him back from the edge of the
grave.
"I'm not fit to-day. Let it be to-morrow, Mona," was his hesitating
reply; but he did not leave the doorway.
She shook her head and made a swift little childlike gesture towards him.
"We are sure of to-day; we are not sure of to-morrow. One or the other
of us might not be here to-morrow. Let us do to-day the thing that
belongs to to-day."
That note struck home, for indeed the black spirit which whispers to men
in their most despairing hours to end it all had whispered to him.
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