When he had closed the door, Eve turned suddenly and confronted him, interrupting the question which was on his lips. He noticed, with a quick apprehension, that she was very pale, that the smile which she had worn for her guests had given place to an expression even more ominous than her pallor and the trembling of her lips. "Why have I brought you here?" she echoed. "I don't know, I might have asked you before them all--perhaps you would have preferred that! But I won't keep you long. The truth! That is all I want!" He frowned, with a vicious movement of his lips: then meeting her gaze, made an awkward effort to seem at ease. "My dear child!" he said, stepping back and leaning his back against the door, "what melodrama! The truth! what truth?" "How often you must have withheld it from me, to ask like that! The truth about Philip Rainham, and that woman: that is what I ask!" Lightmark exclaimed petulantly at this: "Haven't we discussed it all before? Haven't you questioned me beyond all limits? Haven't you said that you believed me? And what a time----" "Yes, I have asked you before. Is it my fault that you have lied? Is it my fault that you have made it possible for--for someone else to prove to me, to-night, that you have deceived me? The time is not of my making. But now, I must have the truth; it is the only reparation, the last thing I shall ask of you!" "You must be mad!" he stammered, his self-possession deserting him; "you don't know--you have no right to speak to me like this. You don't understand these things; you must let me judge for you----" "The only thing I understand clearly is that you have blackened another man's--your friend's--memory. Isn't that enough? Can you deny that you have allowed him to bear your shame? I know now that he was innocent; I insist that you shall tell me the rest!" "The rest!" he repeated impatiently, shifting his attitude. "I won't submit to this cross-examination! I have explained it all before; I decline to say any more!" "Then you cling to your lie?" "Lie? Pray, don't be so sensational; you talk like the heroine of a fifth-rate drama! Who has put such a mad idea into your head? Let me warn you that there are limits to my patience!" "I will tell you, if you will come with me and deny it to his face--if you will refute his proofs." "Proofs! You have no right to ask such a thing! I tell you, I have acted for the best. Why should you believe the first comer rather than me?" "Why? You can ask why!" she interposed. "Let me beg of you to come back with me to our guests; we shall be missed--people will talk!" Eve shrugged her shoulders defiantly, ironically. "You prevaricate; you won't, you can't be candid! There is only one other man who can tell me the truth--you make it necessary, I must go to him." Lightmark clenched his hand viciously upon the handle of the door.