"No--let me tell you. I've got to, Jack. I've had this so long in my heart to tell you!... You must be patient with me, this once, and listen.... You must know that I loved you then when I--ran to you--threw myself into your arms--made you ask me to marry you and promised I would and--and thought that I was safe from _him_ because of my promise. But I didn't know myself--nor him. He seemed able to make his will my law so easily--so strangely!... Even when I ran away with him, I knew that happiness could never come of it.... It was just the madness ... I couldn't help myself ... I just could not _help_ myself.... And then--ah, but I have paid for my madness--many times over!..." For the moment he couldn't trust himself to speak. The woman bent forward to gain a glimpse of his half-averted face, and searched it anxiously with her haunted eyes. "You do understand, Jack?... You forgive?..." "There isn't any question of forgiveness," he said. "And I always understood--half-way. You know that--you must have known it, or you couldn't have said--what you have--to me." The woman laughed a little, tender, broken laugh. "I am so glad!" she said softly. "Perhaps it's wrong.... But you've made me a little happier. I have needed so desperately someone to confess to--someone on whose sympathy I could count. And--Jack--the only one in the world was you.... You--you've helped." She rose, holding out both hands to him, and as he took them and held them tight he saw that her lovely eyes were wide and dim with tears. "You've proved my faith in you," she said--"my gentle man--my knight sans peur et sans reproche!" He bent his head to her hands, but before his lips could touch them, very gently she drew them away, and turned and left him. Bareheaded and wondering, for a long time he stood staring at the spot where, in company with the nurse, she had disappeared. XXVIII As soon as the porter had made up the lower berth in the section Joan had reserved for her sole accommodation--in spite of the strain of thrift ingrained in her nature--she retired to it, buttoned securely the heavy plush portieres, and prepared for rest by reducing herself to that state of semi-undress in which she had learned to travel by night. Then, by the light of the small electric lamp above her pillow, she turned out the contents of her handbag and counted the money she had stolen from Quard. The sum of it, more than twenty-one hundred dollars, staggered her. She hadn't dreamed that Quard possessed so much ready cash. Carefully folding the bills of larger denomination into a neat, flat packet, she wrapped them in a handkerchief and hid them in the hollow of her bosom, secured by a safety-pin to her ribbed silk undervest. The remainder, more than enough to cover all ordinary expenses en route to New York, she disposed of more accessibly, half in her handbag, half in one of her stockings.