He did not notice the change in Thornton
until he had lighted a lamp. Thornton was looking at him doggedly.
There was an unpleasant look in his face, a flush about his eyes, a
rigid tenseness in the muscles of his jaws.
"And I--I, too, am going to-night," he said. "Into the South,
m'sieur?"
"No, into the NORTH." There was a fierceness in Thornton's emphasis.
He stood opposite Jan, leaning over the table on which the light was
placed. "I've broken loose," he went on. "I'm not going south--back to
that hell of mine. I'm never going south again. I'm dead down there--
dead for all time. They'll never hear of me again. They can have my
fortune--everything. I'm going North. I'm going to live with YOU
people--and God--AND HER!"
Jan sank into a chair, Thornton sat down in one across from him.
"I am going back to her," he repeated. "No one will ever know."
He could not account for the look in Jan's eyes nor for the nervous
twitching of the lithe brown hands that reached half across the table.
But Kazan's one eye told him more than Thornton could guess, and in
response to it that ominous shivering wave rose along his spine.
Thornton would never know that Jan's fingers twitched for an instant
in their old mad desire to leap at a human throat.
"You will not do that," he said quietly.
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