"Not at all. To have feared that you would fail me would have been to be a coward. The only way to end the fear was to give it its full opportunity. Otherwise the fear--a very small one then--would have continued indefinitely: after von Klausen had dropped out of our lives, his influence untried, I should have feared you with other men." "You dare to say that!" He was returning to the attitude of mind in which he had entered the room. The novelty of her attack was, from its frequent thrusts, losing its point. "Why not?" he asked. "The surest thing about a fault of this kind is that it depends wholly upon the person destined to commit it, not at all upon any particular accomplice." He was quite calm again. "If," he went on, "a woman compromises herself with X, at least after she has become a wife, it is only a question of time before she will compromise herself with Y and Z. If she wants to compromise herself with X and only exterior circumstances interfere to prevent her, she is certain, sooner or later, to commit the fault with Y or Z, either or both, when the Y and Z happen to appear, as appear they infallibly must. Their personality doesn't matter. Any Y, any Z, will serve. In fact, though this fact does not concern me personally, I believe that, even if she should free herself from her husband and marry an X with whom she has managed to compromise herself, it is only a matter of a few months or a few years before Y and Z will have their innings anyhow." Muriel's fists were clenched at her sides. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were crimson. Tight as her stays were, her white breast above the low-cut black corsage rose and fell like white-capped waves seen in a lightning-flash on a darkened sea. "I shan't stay in this room and listen any longer to such things," she declared. He raised a steady hand. "Only a moment more, please," he said. Her reply was merely to stand there before him. He continued: "So, as I say, I gave you that fair chance. You weren't equal to it. I took you away from Paris again--the next day, wasn't it?--because you wanted to go, but I knew that your wanting to go away from von Klausen was a purely temporary mood of repentance. I had been patient, for I am by nature a patient man; but I grew tired of waiting. When this Austrian turned up here in Marseilles, as I was sure he would soon turn up, I decided to make an end of it. Now"--he spoke as if he were concluding an affair of business--"I have made that end." "How have you made that end?" Stainton smiled wanly. "My dear----" he said. "Don't call me that." "Then, Muriel. Muriel, don't try to bluff it out. You can't do it: you are not naturally a liar, and the successful liar is born, not made." "How have you made an end?" "By coming back from Avignon; by never going farther away than Avignon." "You mean that you think--that you dare to think that I--that the Captain and--that we----"