"And have you considered, have you allowed your imagination to paint for you what the consequence will be should the verdict at your trial go against you?" "As, considering the evidence which will be brought against me, it is nearly sure to do. Yes, I have fully considered the consequence, and may be said to be on pretty familiar terms with it by this time. But as for my imagination, I trust it is too well-bred to allow itself to dwell unnecessarily on details which are best kept in the background till the latest possible moment." "And the prospect does not appall you?" "Appall me? No. 'Tis not a pleasant one, I admit. But what would you? I played a game with Fate, the dice went against me, and I have lost. That, however, is no reason why I should bewail myself like a puling child, or why my cheek should blanch at the prospect which I shall presently be called upon to confront." "But will you not see, cannot you comprehend, that a door of escape is open for you?" Her voice had in it a ring of almost passionate impatience. The precious minutes were drifting away one by one. "Possibly so, but only at an expense which I do not choose to incur." "Oh, what headstrong folly! Did the world ever see its like? And you would rather face your--your doom than accept this sacrifice, as you choose to call it, at my hands?" "Even so. I have said it, and nothing will avail to move me from it." For a moment or two she beat her hands together in an agony of helplessness. Then she stood up. Her face was colorless, and her forehead contracted as if with a spasm of intense pain. "You do not know how cruel you are," she said in low, concentrated tones. "You drag from me things which I thought never to reveal to a living soul." She paused for a space of half-a-dozen heart-beats, as though fighting against some hidden emotion. Then she went on. "Should it be your fate to die, Geoffrey Dare, the same day that ends your life shall end mine! I swear it." She lifted up her hands and let her face sink into them. An inarticulate cry broke from Dare, a great light leapt into his eyes, he drew a step nearer and held out both his arms. Then he half drew back, with his arms extended in mid-air. "Such words, unless I am a bad interpreter, can have but one meaning." He seemed to breathe the syllables rather than to speak them. For a few seconds there was no reply, and when it did come he had to strain his ears or he would have lost it. "Your death-day shall be mine. I have said it. Is not that enough?" A moment later his arms were about her, and he was straining her passionately to his heart. "And you love me!--me!!" he ejaculated. "Oh, miracle of miracles!" Sweet to him as a breath from Paradise was the whispered answer: "I have loved you ever since the night you were so kind to Jack Prentice." It was three minutes later. With what passed in the interim we are in no way concerned.