“The facts? Yes!” she said. “But if the facts are denied? Can they be proved? If you face this meeting and say that you yourself have been deceived? Even if it should come to a prosecution there are always loopholes! With good counsel and facing it out ourselves unflinchingly, you would come through untouched! It is the only chance, Julian, and we must dare it.” CHAPTER XV The red glow from the setting sun had shifted a little. It fell now behind Julian and between him and Clemence, and its light seemed to isolate the mother and son, shutting them in alone together. Mrs. Romayne stood a few paces from Julian, not touching him or appealing to him, concentrating all her forces on the dominating of his weaker nature. Julian stood doggedly before her, his hands clenched, his face set. Near the window, looking across the shabby little room from which those two figures, eloquent of struggle and crisis, stood out so strangely, was Clemence; her eyes fixed upon Julian now as though life and death hung on his looks. Aloof alike from Clemence and from the mother and son, a grim spectator holding in reserve his weight of condemnation until the upshot of the scene should declare itself, was Dennis Falconer. For all answer, as though her ringing words had touched him so little that he found them not even worth the trouble of an articulate denial, Julian shook his head sullenly. The gesture witnessed to a heavy dead weight of dissent likely to be more difficult to act upon than the most vehement opposition, and Mrs. Romayne paused for a moment, looking at him, her lips taking a firmer line, her eyes flashing. “You don’t realise the position,” she said. “Look at it and understand the choice before you. On the one hand is ignominy, ruin, the end of your career; to reach it you have only to give way to your nerves, to act under the influence of panic, to run away, in short. On the other hand,” she moved a step nearer to him with a tense, emphatic gesture, which seemed an outlet for some of the passionate urgency which she was keeping resolutely in hand; “on the other hand is the very reverse of all this. Social position, consideration, the prosperous life to which you have always looked forward--all this is to be retained by one bold stroke, by a little courage and resolution, and at the risk of what is by no means worse than the life which must inevitably be yours if you do not nerve yourself to run it. Julian, think what is at stake!” Falconer’s eyes had been fixed on Mrs. Romayne, severe, inexorable in their condemnation. They travelled, now, to Julian. Again Julian made that dull gesture of negation. “It’s all over,” he said doggedly. “I’ve staked and lost.”