Woodhouse caught at her answer with a quick lifting of the brows. He turned again to feast his eyes on the girl's piquant face, even more alluring now because of the fleeting color that left the cheeks with a tea rose's coldness. "Miss Gerson, something I have done or said"--the man was laboring after words--"you are not yourself, and maybe I am respon----" She turned from him with a slight shudder. Her hand was extended in mute appeal for silence. He waited while his eyes followed the heaving of her shoulders under the emotion that was racking her. Suddenly she faced him again, and words rushed from her lips in an abandon of terror: "Captain Woodhouse, I know too much--about you and why you are here. Oh, more than I want to! Accident--bad luck, believe me, it is not my seeking that I know you are a--a----" He had started forward at her outburst, and now he stood very close to her, his gray eyes cold and unchanging. "Say it--say the word! I'm not afraid to hear it," he commanded tensely. She drew back from him a little wildly, her hands fluttering up as if to fend him off. "You--you are in great danger this minute. You were brought here this afternoon to be trapped--exposed and made----" "I was fully aware of that when I came, Miss Gerson," he interrupted. "The invitation, coming so suddenly--so pressing--I think I read it aright." "But the promise you made me give last night!" Sudden resentment brushed aside for the instant the girl's first flood of sympathy. "That has involved me with you. Oh, that was unfair--to make me promise I would not allude to--to our first meeting!" "Involved you?" He closed one of her hands in his as if to calm her and force more rational speech. "Then you have been----" "Questioned by General Crandall--about you," she broke in, struggling slightly to free her hand. "Questioned--and even bullied and threatened." "And you kept your promise?" The question was put so low Jane could hardly catch it. She slowly nodded. "Miss Gerson, you will never have cause to regret that you did." Woodhouse pressed her hand with almost fierce intenseness, then let it go. Her face was flaming now under the stress of excitement. She knew tears stood in her eyes, and was angered at their being there; he might mistake them. Woodhouse continued, in the same suppressed tone: "You were on the point of using a word a minute ago, Miss Gerson, which was hard for you to voice because you thought it an ugly word. You seemed sure it was the right word to fit me. You only hesitated out of--ah--decency. Yet you kept faith with me before General Crandall. May I hope that means----" "You may hope nothing!" Quick rebellion at what she divined to be coming flamed in Jane's eyes. "You have no right to hope for more from me than what you forced by promise. I would not be saying what I have to you if--if I did not feel I--that your life----"