"Yes, I would!" He looked her fair in the eye, truthfully. "I know that, now--I didn't know it then, but I do now. Yes, I would. Just as I told him--Mr. Rawn." "You told him, what?" "Why, that we all have our price. I suppose I had mine." "So you'd have done that if I had asked you?" "Then in God's name why did you not ask me? At least, I'd have saved you _this_!" He smote on the paper with his clenched fist. "Why didn't you ask me to save you this humiliation?" "I did not, because I knew all along what you'd do if I did ask you." Silence fell between them now. "Why didn't you?" he once more demanded, half-whispering. "You'd already won. You'd have won me--my principles--my honor." "Because I did not _want to win_!" she answered sharply. "Win what?" "I was sent to bring you into camp, to 'get' you, Charley. I did not want to--I did not! I was afraid I _would_!" "I don't think I quite understand." His face was white, his voice low and clear, his eye full on hers. "I was sent out for you, Charley--by my own husband! You know it, we both knew it. I suppose he's been waiting somewhere for me to get word to him that I had done what I was told to do--that I had got you in hand, willing to renounce everything that you held good in your own life. Well, it's too late, now! I'm glad!" "He sent you out after me!--With what restrictions--?" "None. He didn't care how. He told me he didn't. That's why I've been keeping away from you. I was afraid I'd win--I was afraid I'd save all this." She nodded her head, including the splendors of the mansion house, its view of the lake, all the gracious, delicate ministries of Wealth. VII "Good God!" Halsey broke out. "The man who would do that is not worth a woman's second thought." "Of course not. And the woman who would do that--?" "Don't ask me about that; I can't think. All I know is that if you had asked me to do anything in the world, I think I'd have said yes." "For me?" "Yes, for you. It's the truth. It's all out, at last! There's the whole story now of John Rawn--all of it, in black and white! Here's all _my_ story--to you. You must have known--" "Yes," she nodded; "of course. That was why, I said, that I've evaded you so long. It was very hard to do, Charley; a hundred times I've been on the point of sending for you. But I didn't." "I'm glad, too," he said simply, seeing it was to be soul facing soul, between them now. "I've missed you. I've never passed such days in my life as I have here. There's Grace hating me, you ought to hate me--I ought to hate you! Oh, Rawn, man! Where would you have stopped, to get money, to get power? Oh, excellent!--to set your wife as a trap for another man! But it worked! It could have been done!" He looked her frankly in the face as he finished. "I love you, Virginia," he said simply. "I suppose I have all along. It's cheap, after all--at this price. But for all this, I never could have told you.