“I dressed all up for this,” said Hawkins, with a wan smile; “but something's snapped here--inside here.” His hand felt a little aimlessly over his heart. “I know now that I ain't ever going to be worthy; and I know now that she ain't ever to know that I--that I--I'm her old daddy. And so I--I've fixed it just now like you saw so there ain't no going back on it. But I ain't throwing my little girl down. It ain't Claire that's got to be made change her mind--_it's Crang_.” He raised a clenched fist. “And Crang's going to change it! I can swear to _that_ and know I'll keep it, so--so help me, God! And when she's rid of him, she ain't going to have no shame and sorrow from me. That's what I meant.” “Yes,” said John Bruce mechanically. “I'm going now,” said Hawkins in a low voice. “Around by the other way,” said Paul Veniza softly. “And I'll go with you, old friend.” For a moment Hawkins hesitated, and then he nodded his head. No one spoke. Paul Veniza's arm was around Hawkins' shoulders as they left the room. The door closed behind them. John Bruce sat down on the edge of his bed. CHAPTER TWELVE--THE FIGHT |FOR a long time John Bruce stared at the closed door; first a little helplessly because the bottom seemed quite to have dropped out of things, and then with set face as the old cabman's words came back to him: “Crang--not Claire.” And at this, a sort of merciless joy crept into his eyes, and he nodded his head in savage satisfaction. Yes, Hawkins had been right in that respect, and--well, it would be easier to deal with Crang! And then suddenly John Bruce's face softened. Hawkins! He remembered the fury with which the old man had inspired him as the other had reeled into the room, and Clare, hurt and miserable, had risen from her chair. But he remembered Hawkins in a different way now. It was Hawkins, not Claire, who had been hurt. The shabby old figure standing there had paid a price, and as he believed for Claire's sake, that had put beyond his reach forever what must have meant, what did mean, all that he cherished most in life. John Bruce smiled a little wistfully. Somehow he envied Hawkins, so pitifully unstable and so weak--his strength! He shook his head in a puzzled way. His thoughts led him on. What a strange, almost incomprehensible, little world it was into which fate, if one wished to call it fate, had flung him! It was an alien world to him. His own life of the past rose up in contrast with it--> not of his own volition, but because the comparison seemed to insist on thrusting itself upon him. He had never before met men like Hawkins and Paul Veniza. He had met drunkards and pawnbrokers. Very many of them! He had lived his life, or, rather, impoverished it with a spendthrift hand, among just such classes--but he was conscious that it would never have been the poorer for an intimacy with either Hawkins or Paul Veniza.