"Yes," said Janet. Cuckoo looked for a moment at the innocent, fair face above her, and a faint colour stained her cheek. But she remembered her husband, and summoned her old courage. She spoke quickly, with the clearness and precision which had made her such an excellent woman of business, so invaluable on the committees of fashionable charities. "I am a bad woman, Janet. I have concealed it from you, and from every one. Arthur--has never guessed it. Don't shudder. Don't turn away. There's not time. Keep all that for later--when I'm gone. And don't drive me to distraction by thinking this is a dying hallucination. I know what I am saying, and I, who have lied so often, am driven to speak the truth at last." "Don't," said Janet. "If it's true, don't say it, but let it die with you. Don't break Mr Brand's heart now at the last moment." Cuckoo's astute eyes dwelt on Janet's face. How slow she was! What a blunt instrument had Fate vouchsafed to her. "I speak to save him," she said. "Don't interrupt again, but listen. It all goes back a long way. I was forced into marrying Arthur. I disliked him, for I was in love with some one else--some one, as I see now, not fit to black his boots. I was straight when I married Arthur, but--I did not stay straight afterwards. Arthur is a hard man, but he was good and tender to me always, and he trusted me absolutely. I deceived him--for years. The child is not Arthur's. Arty is not Arthur's. I never was really sorry until a year ago, when he--the other--left me for some one else. He said he had fallen in love with a good woman--a snowflake." Even now Cuckoo set her teeth at the remembrance of that speech. But she hurried on. "That was the time I fell ill. And Arthur nursed me. You don't know what Arthur is. I never seemed to have noticed before. Other people fail, but Arthur never fails. And I seemed to come to myself. I could not bear him out of my sight. And ever since I have loved him, as I thought people only loved in poetry books. I saw he was the only one. And I thought he would never know. If he did, it would break his heart and mine, wherever I was." Cuckoo waited a moment, and then went on with methodical swiftness: