“Well?” she demanded at last. “I am still waiting to see Manley. I am not quite a child, Mr. Burnett. I know something is the matter, and you--if you have any pity, or any feeling of friendship, you will tell me the truth. Don't you suppose I know that Arline was--_lying_ to me all the time about Manley? You helped her to lie. So did that other man. I waited until I reached town, where I could do something, and now you must tell me the truth. Manley is badly hurt, or he is dead. Tell me which it is, and take me to him.” She spoke fast, as if she was afraid she might not be able to finish, though her voice was even and low, it was also flat and toneless with her effort to seem perfectly calm and self-controlled. Kent looked at her, forgot all about leading up to the truth by easy stages, as he had intended to do, and gave it to her straight. “He ain't either one,” he said. “He's drunk!” Val stared at him. “Drunk!” He could see how even her lips shrank from the word. She threw up her head. “That,” she declared icily, “I know to be impossible!” “Oh, do you? Let me tell you that's _never_ impossible with a man, not when there's whisky handy.” “Manley is not that sort of a man. When he left me, three years ago, he promised me never to frequent places where liquor is sold. He never had touched liquor; he never was tempted to touch it. But, just to be doubly sure, he promised me, on his honor. He has never broken that promise; I know, because he told me so.” She made the explanation scornfully, as if her pride and her belief in Manley almost forbade the indignity of explaining. “I don't know why you should come here and insult me,” she added, with a lofty charity for his sin. “I don't see how it can insult you,” he contended. “You're got a different way of looking at things, but that won't help you to dodge facts. Man's drunk. I said it, and I mean it. It ain't the first time, nor the second. He was drunk the day you came, and couldn't meet the train. That's why I met you. I ought to've told you, I guess, but I hated to make you feel bad. So I went to work and sobered him up, and sent him over to get married. I've always been kinda sorry for that. It was a low-down trick to play on you, and that's a fact. You ought to've had a chance to draw outa the game, but I didn't think about it at the time. Man and I have always been pretty good friends, and I was thinking of _his_ side of the case. I thought he'd straighten up after he got married; he wasn't such a hard drinker--only he'd go on a toot when he got into town, like lots of men. I didn't think it had such a strong hold on him. And I knew he thought a lot of you, and if you went back on him it'd hit him pretty hard. Man ain't a bad fellow, only for that. And he's liable to do better when he finds out you know about it. A man will do 'most anything for a woman he thinks a lot of.”