“You mean that I should--that you want me to--to tell my sister,” she faltered; and she could no longer look him in the face. “Your sister!” Brant fought a good fight for self-control and won it. “No, Dorothy; it is not Isabel’s belief that troubles me; it is yours. How could you have misunderstood?” Dorothy felt her lips growing cold, and the solid floor of the cell swayed under her feet until she clung to the wall for support. “How could I? But she told me--” She broke off in pitiable confusion, and Brant gave her the helping hand of a question: “What was it she told you? I have given you the right to say anything you please to me now.” She saw instantly that she must go on or leave Isabel under an imputation too dreadful to be contemplated. “She told me that--that she sent you away.” “Sent me away? But she didn’t send me away; that couldn’t be, you know. It is all a mistake, Dorothy--an awful mistake. It was not I whom she sent away; it was Harry.” “Harry!” said Dorothy faintly. “Oh, dear, what have I done? Tell me one thing, please. Whom did you meet the last evening you came to see us?” It was Brant’s turn to be confused and tongue-tied, and he answered her with his eyes on the floor. “I met--your mother. I went over that evening to tell you that--I--loved you, my darling; to tell you what I had been, and what I hoped to be, and to ask you to wait until I could make my promises good. Your mother met me, and-- But no matter about that. It was she who sent me away--for good reasons, you will say now. None the less, bad as I am, and good as you are, I love you--you and no other, my dear one; how truly and passionately you may know some day.” “Some day!” She knew at that sublime moment, and the keen joy of the knowledge made her lose sight of everything save the heart-quelling fact. “Thank God, I know it now!--know that you are here in prison because you thought it was the only way to save my brother. Oh, how could I----” “Be so faithless,” she would have said; but he caught her in his arms and his kisses put the remorseful exclamation to death. “Say but two words, my darling,” he whispered. “Tell me that you love me, and that you believe me innocent of this last horrible thing, and I shall die happier than most men live.” But, after all, he had to take the first of the two words for granted. His saying that he should die happy brought her back to the peril of the moment. “Oh, please don’t say that! I know you are innocent; but so is brother!” He shook his head gravely and drew her closer. “I wish I could believe that, but I can’t, Dorothy, dear,” he said sorrowfully. “I should not have been weak enough to betray him, even to you; but now you must keep my secret and help me to save him. Try to think of it as I have. You remember what the Man of Nazareth said: ‘They that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ I have lived a life of violence, and it is only just that I should pay the penalty.”