Then she rose, took the decanter of whiskey, replaced it on the sideboard, and seated herself by his side, putting her hand on his arm. "Francis, if you care for me, if you want us ever to love each other again, answer me honestly. Have you and that contractor done anything wrong about the school?" "You can't understand," he replied roughly, drawing his arm from her touch. "You are making a great deal out of your own imagination." "Answer me!" she said, in the same tense tone of pure will. "Have you let that man Graves cheat the trustees,--do anything dishonest,--and shut your eyes to it?" "Pemberton claims he hasn't lived up to the specifications," the architect admitted sullenly. "And you knew it?" "So he says." There was a moment's silence between them while the vision of this fraud filled their minds. She seemed to hesitate before the evil thing that she had raised, and then she asked again, quickly:-- "Have you--did you make any money from it?" He did not reply. "Tell me, Francis!" she persisted. "Did this man give you anything for letting him--cheat the trustees? Tell me!" He was cold and careless now. This new will in his wife, unexpected, so totally unlike her gentle, yielding nature, compelled him to reveal some part of the truth. In this last resort her will was the stronger. He said slowly:-- "If he got the school contract, there was an understanding that he was to give me some stock in a corporation. It was involved with other business." "He was to give you stock?" "Yes; stock in a hotel that he's been building--another piece of work." "And he gave you this stock?" "Some of it." "What have you done with it?" "Sold it." "You have sold it?" "Yes. It was a kind of bonus he gave me for getting him the contract and for doing the plans for the hotel, too." Further than that admission he would not go, and they left the subject late at night. He was sullen and hard, and resented her new tone of authority to him; for he had always counted on her acquiescence and tenderness as his immutable rights. In the morning this feeling of resentment was more firmly fixed. He regretted that in a moment of weakness he had admitted what he had the night before. When she came to him as he was preparing to leave the house, and, putting her hands on his arms, begged him to talk with her again before going to the office, he listened moodily and said that he was pressed for time. "Won't you go to them, to the trustees, to Everett, anyway, and tell them everything you know? And give them that money--the money you got from the stock?" "That's a woman's plan! That would make a nice mess, wouldn't it? I told you I got that as a bonus. I have worked a lot for this contractor, and he offered me this chance to make some money in one of his schemes. It's often done, something like that. You'd like to see me get into trouble--be disgraced for good and all?"