"Thank you, Jason." Jimmie Dale turned again from the table. "There is
nothing you can do now, but if the time ever comes--" He looked for a
long minute into Jason's face; then his hands were laid again on the
other's shoulders, and he swung the old man gently around. "There's the
door, Jason--and God bless you!"
Jason went slowly from the room. The door closed. For the first time
that he had ever held a letter of hers in his hand Jimmie Dale was for a
moment heedless of it. If the time ever came! He smiled strangely. The
love and affection that had come with the years of Jason's service were
not all on one side. Not for anything in the world would he put a hair
of that gray head in jeopardy! It was not lack of faith or trust that
held him back from taking Jason into his full confidence--it was the
possibility, always present, that some day the house of cards might
totter, the Gray Seal be discovered to be Jimmie Dale, and in the ruin,
the disaster, the debacle that must follow, the less old Jason knew, for
old Jason's own sake, the better! It was the one thing that would save
Jason. The charge of complicity would fall to the ground before the old
man's very ingenuousness!
And then Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders, a sort of whimsical
fatalistic philosophy upon him, and, as he tore the envelope open, he
sat down in the lounging chair close to the table.
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