He has risen from his kneeling attitude; but that unaccountable something in her face hinders him from making any effort to bridge the distance she has set between them. Across that distance comes her reply, in a voice that seems to set her continents and seas away from him: 'Are you--quite--sure--that--I--need answer you?' 'Sure that you need answer me?' repeats he bewildered, struggling against the ice that is sweeping up over his heart; 'why, of course I am! Why else should I have asked you? We must be playing at cross-purposes,' with an attempted smile. 'Of course I am sure!'--reading the disbelief in her white face--'quite sure! What can I say to asseverate it? As sure as that I stand here--as sure as----' 'Oh, stop!--stop!' she cries vehemently, thrusting out her hands towards him as if in passionate prohibition, while a surge of colour coming into her face restores her to some likeness to his Peggy; 'do not--do not let me have to think that I have been the cause of your telling any more falsehoods!' 'Any _more_?' echoes he, putting up his hand to his forehead, and feeling as if she had struck him across the eyes. 'Yes,' she says, gasping, while he sees her hand go out in unconscious quest of the table-edge, as if to steady herself. 'Yes!--do not I speak plainly? Any _more_!' Again he passes his hand over that brow that feels cut and furrowed by the lash of her words. 'You--must--explain,' he says slowly; 'apparently I am dull this morning. What other falsehoods have I told you?' Both her hands are clutching the table now; nor is its support unneeded, for her body sways. Only for a moment, however. In a moment she is standing firm again. 'What other?' she repeats, half under her breath; 'what other? Oh!' with a long shuddering groan, 'how many, many you must have told before you could grow to do it with a face that looks so like truth!' But at that the insulted manhood of him awakes, goaded into life, and shakes off the paralysis engendered by his horrible astonishment. 'Come!' he exclaims, disregarding her unspoken veto, going close up to her and standing before her, with folded arms and flashing eyes; 'this is intolerable!--this is more than man can bear! Let me hear what you have to say--speak your accusation; but do not tell me to my face that I am a liar, without bringing a rag of evidence to support it!' She looks back at him, taking in, with a startled air, his changed demeanour--the command of his attitude--the authority of his eyes. Then-- 'You--are--right,' she says, panting, while he sees her poor heart miserably leap under the pink cotton gown he had praised yesterday--was it yesterday, or before Noah's flood? 'I--have no right to bring vague accusations, as you say. Will you--will you--let me wait a minute?'