Cameron swiftly walked away in the gloom, with the blood thrumming
thick in his ears, whispering over and over:
"Merciful God! Nell was his daughter!"
III
As thought and feeling multiplied, Cameron was overwhelmed. Beyond
belief, indeed, was it that out of the millions of men in the world
two who had never seen each other could have been driven into the desert
by memory of the same woman. It brought the past so close. It showed
Cameron how inevitably all his spiritual life was governed by what had
happened long ago. That which made life significant to him was a wandering
in silent places where no eye could see him with his secret. Some fateful
chance had thrown him with the father of the girl he had wrecked.
It was incomprehensible; it was terrible. It was the one thing
of all possible happenings in the world of chance that both father
and lover would have found unendurable.
Cameron's pain reached to despair when he felt this relation between
Warren and himself. Something within him cried out to him to reveal
his identity. Warren would kill him; but it was not fear of death
that put Cameron on the rack. He had faced death too often to be
afraid. It was the thought of adding torture to this long-suffering
man. All at once Cameron swore that he would not augment Warren's
trouble, or let him stain his hands with blood. He would tell the
truth of Nell's sad story and his own, and make what amends he could.
Then Cameron's thought shifted from father to daughter.
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