She opened her lips to ask him if he were ill, but at that moment something in his look palsied the words. Her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. Her breath was shut off. An instant, horrible enlightenment had fallen upon her. Then, "You thought--I did it!" she said. CHAPTER XLIII IN THE LIBRARY ONCE MORE He caught her hand as she turned from him. "Margaret, for God's sake, hear me before you go!" Opening the door of the library he drew her in and closed it behind them. She dropped into a chair and waited for him to speak. But it was the first time they had been there together since the reading of the will, and the benumbing influence of that hour fell on him like a nightmare. He felt that he could never make her hear. Struggle as he might for utterance, it would only be an inarticulate horrible moan at last. If he could but have heard this story before! If only the fatal words, "and shall claim the child," had been unsaid--how different all would be! How frightfully easy to utter words. How impossible to evade the avalanche of consequences they set loose! From his place by the mantel with one arm resting on it he regarded her in silence. Neither evaded the other now. They knew by instinct that it was the final passage between them. "Go on," she said. "Let me hear it now." Repeating, "You thought--I did it," not scornfully, nor even in reproach, but as one who is in a maze and hunting for the clue. "I thought you did it." "For five long years you have believed me a murderess, and have given me no opportunity to vindicate myself!" "For five long years I have believed you a murderess, and have given you no chance to vindicate yourself!" It seemed almost as if he were mocking her, but she knew from the wretchedness of his face that he was simply pleading guilty. "This then is the explanation of it all--why you have followed me so pitilessly--why--" "Margaret, listen to me!" he cried, throwing off the incubus that was upon him. "Let me add my part to the pitiful story you heard upstairs before you pass final judgment. Then I will go away--out of your life forever." "You cannot go away out of my life forever," she said passionately, remembering Philip. "It is too late for that! When one thrusts himself into the life of another he cannot leave it at his will. Neither can he escape the consequences of his acts by turning his back upon them." "True! Too true!" he answered mournfully. There was a note of such utter misery in his voice that it touched her heart.