"And to what I have to say. You hate Mrs. Balfame. You are bored to death with her. You are appalled. You have found her out for what she is. You are going to marry her out of pity and because you are too honourable to desert a woman who will always be under a cloud, even if you had it in you to break your word; and because you have a twisted romantic notion about being true to an old if mistaken ideal--one of a set that has flourished like hardy old-fashioned annuals under the dry soil of hustle and ambition and devotion to your profession. You had fallen in love--or thought you had, which amounts to the same thing for the moment--after so many years of dry spiritual celibacy, and it had been a wonderful revelation--and an inner revolution that made you immensely interested in yourself for the first time. You were exalted; you lived for several months at a pitch above the normal, automatically registering other impressions but only half cognisant of them. And now--you feel that to the love born in delusion and slain by truth you owe the greatest sacrifice a man can make." He had stared at the ground during the first part of her speech, and then raised his eyes sharply, his glance changing to amazement and a flush mounting to his hair. "Oh!" he exclaimed. But he would make no other answer, and once more he dropped his glance to the snow. "Are you going to marry her?" "If she is acquitted." "And if not?" Her voice broke out of its even register. He made an abrupt movement, and she cried out: "I know! I know! Polly told me--Sam tells her everything. He suspects you. He knows that Broderick does. But you don't intend to wait for his denunciation. Mrs. Balfame told that to Polly too. You intend to say you did it. She said she wouldn't let you--oh, wouldn't she!--but you had told her that you would make up a plausible story and stick to it. And I know that you can't prove an alibi. Tell me,"--she came closer and her voice was almost threatening,--"do you really intend to take that crime on your shoulders if she is convicted." "Yes." "Oh! Oh! Men will be sentimental fools until--well, so long as they are born of fools and women. We are made all wrong!" She threw her muff on the ground and beat her hands together. Her eyes were blazing. There was a curious red glow in their olive depths. "Well, listen to me: You are not going to do this thing, although I really believe you'd like to do it as a sort of penance. She could not prevent such a monstrous sacrifice if she would, but I can. Just bear that in mind. If you come forward with any such insane proposition, I will make a fool of you before all the world. If Mrs. Balfame is acquitted, well and good; but if she is not, then I'll betray a confidence and run the risk of killing some one myself--but I'll get the truth. Just remember that, and keep off the witness-stand." "What do you mean?" "I mean that I know where to get the truth."