"I dared do no less," he answered. "I could no longer bear being, for a reason unexplained, in the book of your displeasure. I had to know." "Well, you shan't know." "You judge me, dear lady, without giving the accused an opportunity to plead in his own defence?" "You are not accused--and you aren't judged." "I wish," said von Klausen, slowly, "that I could believe you; but how is that possible?" "Do you mean to say that I am not telling you the truth?" "I mean, dear Mrs. Stainton, that I have no choice. You leave me none. Your words say one thing, but your tone, your manner, say another. To accept your truth in one of your expressions is to deny your truth in another of them." Muriel bit her red under-lip. "Let us go back," she said. "I regret. The carriage has gone ahead." They walked a few steps forward. "You will, then, not explain?" he pleaded. "I tell you there is nothing to explain. You are rude and you are presumptuous." "Yet you have changed since our first acquaintance." "You speak as if you had known me for a long time, Captain." "For a short time I hoped that I knew you well." "What nonsense!" "Well enough it at least really was, for us to share a small secret, madame." Muriel's eyes flashed. "That is not fair!" she exclaimed. "You are referring to an incident that you know it is ungallant for you to mention." Von Klausen bowed. "Then I beg your pardon," he said; "but I insist that you forced me to the reference." "I did not." "You required an explanation of my statement that we had once a close acquaintanceship." "I required nothing--and, anyway, you presumed upon the incident. It was the merest trifle." Von Klausen fixed his steady blue eyes upon her. "It was," he said, slowly, "a trifle that you chose not to confide to your husband." She drew back from him. Her gaze was hot with indignation; her dusky cheeks were aflame. "How low of you!" she cried. But von Klausen only smiled his young, careless smile. "To mention the truth?" he murmured. "To bring up such a trifle--to trade on such a confidence--to make of an impulsive action and of the consequences of that action--you know--I told you at the time, and you must know--that I didn't mention the circumstances to my husband merely because to mention it would have been to betray your terror of the fog, and I thought that, as a soldier, you would not want your terror known." "Ah--so you did think of me, then?" "I shall never think of you again, at any rate." They were now half-way along the Lac Inferieur. Under the arching trees in their new spring green and through the silence of the sunlit spring morning, there came to them the music of the falling water from the Carrefour des Cascades. Von Klausen leaned toward his unwilling companion. His lithe figure trembled, his pink cheeks burned; in his blue eyes there gleamed a fire that had been too long repressed.