"It is true," interrupted Miranda. "If I had wished to evade you, to deceive you, I should have answered that Mr. Wilbraham brought me the news this morning." "I should have disbelieved it." "You could not at all events have disproved it. You would have had not a single word to say." She raised her eyes now and confronted him defiantly. "Yes," said Charnock, "I admit that," and a great change came over Miranda. She stepped out of her corner. She raised her arms above her head like one waking from sleep. "But I have had my fill of deceptions. I am surfeited. Ask what you will, I'll answer you, and answer you the truth. And for one thing, this is true: you told me Ralph Warriner was alive, that night, at Lady Donnisthorpe's." "I told you? On the balcony?" "No, before. In the ball-room. You described him to me. You quoted his phrases. You had seen him that very morning. He was the stranger you quarrelled with in the streets of Plymouth." "And you knew him from my description!" cried Charnock. All the anger had gone from his face, all the coldness from his voice. "I remember. Your face grew so white in the shadow of the alcove I should have believed you had swooned but for the living trouble in your eyes. Your face became through its pallor and distress the face which I had seen in my mirror. Oh, that mirror and its message!" He broke into a harsh bitter laugh, and seating himself at the table, beat upon his forehead with his clenched fists. "A message of appeal! A call for help! Was there ever such a fool in all the world? Here's one woman out of all the millions who needs my help, I was vain enough to think, and the first thing, the only thing that I did, was to tell her that her outcast bully of a husband was still alive to bully her. A fine way to help! But I guessed correctly even that night. Yes, even on that night I was afraid that I had revealed to you some misfortune of which you were unaware. Oh, why wasn't I struck dumb before I spoke? But you could not have been sure from my description," he cried eagerly, grasping in his remorse at so poor a straw as that subterfuge. "For men are not all unlike, and they use the same phrases. You could not have been certain. You must have had some other proof before you were convinced." "Yes, that is true." "And that other proof you got from someone else?" he said, and his voice implored her to assent. Miranda only shook her head. "I promised to speak nothing but the truth. I got that other proof from you." "No, no," he exclaimed. "Let me think! No, I told you nothing else but just my meeting with the man, my quarrel with him."