They went up to the major's room, where they talked more technicalities until a late hour. Potter said good night, and with a feeling of warmth in his soul, a feeling that these men really considered him of value and that he was performing no mean service for his country, he descended to the first floor. The major's parting words had been: "Stick to it, Mr. Waite. Work over it, study it, keep on as you've been going. You are doing a big thing, and your country will owe you its thanks." As he stepped out of the elevator he met Cantor, just about to ascend. Cantor hesitated as if he considered joining Potter, but Potter merely spoke and passed on--not with any thought of brusqueness, but because his mind was full, because he wanted no companionship. Cantor stared after him. "What's gotten hold of him?" he asked himself. The sight of Cantor set in motion new thoughts and speculations, thoughts that might grow into suspicions. "The island was there," Potter said inwardly. "It was no dream. We fell there...." The "we" ushered in Hildegarde von Essen. What warmth of satisfaction he had been experiencing was chilled. Black, brooding, morose shadows took its place--a sort of mental nausea, a shuddering horror of the fact she had stated to him.... Defiled!... That unbelievable, dank, squalid fact!... He saw her as the fairy prince of the day of their flight. It did not seem that life would allow such a glowing, buoyant, fire-pure thing to be touched with evil. It was not a fact that would endure close to her; it was a thing removed from her by an unsurpassable gulf.... Yet it had leaped the gulf and fallen upon her.... She loved him; confessed that she loved him--confessed this black thing to explain why she could not marry him.... His brain burned; it seemed as if he could not endure the reality of it. Insidiously, unasked, came another fact. Cantor had been her companion; there had been intimacy between them.... Cantor was a man whom report said to be without honor in his dealings with women.... The thoughts had become suspicions, searing suspicions. Never again could he take the hand of Cantor in friendship unless they were cleared away.... If Cantor were the man--But what right had he to act? What was it to him? He found himself hating Cantor with a lurid, blood-lusting hatred. Yet he had only suspicions, vague suspicions.... Added to them was the question of Cantor's presence on that island and what it signified. What was the man's business? Who was the man?... These were suspicions Cantor would have labored much to have averted. CHAPTER XVII