“So let it be clearly understood,” he says, raising himself into a sitting posture, taking cold possession of both her hands, and plunging his clear eyes deep into her watery ones, “that when I die--pooh! what does a preposition matter?--_if_ I die, then, let it be clearly understood that I _wish_ you to marry--to marry and bear children to people that nursery which we have both heard so much of!” The light inveterate point of irony pierces, as if against his will, through the last sentence. But for a sob or two, she has listened to his harangue in absolute silence; her painful excitement rising by rushes to the highest possible pitch. Is not _now_, if ever, the moment to put her question? “You have said your say,” she begins, her chest heaving as high as it had done during that awful race with Fate along the railway line, seven weeks ago. “And now I have to say mine. I have long had a question to put to you.” A ripple of uneasiness skims over the exalted calmness of his face. “Are you sure that it is worth putting?” “Quite sure.” “Put it, then.” “I have long wished to ask you--I must ask you, now, whether on that day----” “Well?” “When, after having saved the child, you so unaccountably remained standing, for two or three seconds, right in front of the engine----” “Yes?” “Whether”--was there ever a mouth so like a bit of charred stick as hers feels?--“you lost your head? or--whether you did--it--on purpose--with a deliberate intention of--suicide?” The word clothes its ugliness in a hissing whisper, but there is no doubt as to his having heard it. “What next?” he asks with--is it half-contempt, or what he means her to think so?--“what maggot will your brain breed next?” But now that every muscle, nerve, and fibre of her body are strung up to their highest tension, he shall not escape her. “That is no answer to my question. Did you lose your head? or did you mean to kill yourself?” If he hesitates for one instant, she will know what to believe. But he does not hesitate. “I lost my head!” he answers, meeting the thumbscrew and hot pincers of her torture-chamber without a wince. “Not having been brought up to the trade of hero, I did not understand the ropes, and--I lost my head!” * * * * * Did Rupert Campion speak truth? or has he added one more to the tale of noble lies?--to Rahab’s and Arria’s and Desdemona’s? CHAPTER XXIII “Why, he but sleeps! If he be dead, we’ll make his grave his bed; With female fairies shall thy tomb be haunted.”