"I know, I know," he replied unsteadily. "I disclosed my secret to but one person in the world." And as I held my peace wondering, he flashed on me a tortured face. "Don't force me to give the name!" he cried. "Think! Think, Morrice! Who should I have told? Who should I have told?" The words seemed wrung from his soul. I understood what that first outburst meant when the gaoler had bidden me enter, and my gorge rose against this woman who could make such foul sport of her lover's trust. He read my thought in my face, and though he might upbraid his mistress himself, he would not suffer me to do the same. "You must not blame her," he said earnestly, laying a hand upon my knee. "Blame me! Blame us who wantoned the days away at Whitehall, and cloyed the very air with our flatteries. You chose the right part, Morrice, a man's part--work. As for us," he resumed his restless walk about the chamber, beating one clenched fist into the palm of the other, "as for us, a new fashion, a new dance, were our studies, cajoling women our work. The divine laws were sneered at, trampled down. They were meet for the ragged who had nought but hope in the next world to comfort them for their humiliation in this. But we--we who had silk to wear and money to spend, we needed a different creed. Sin was our God, and we worshipped and honoured it openly. When I think of it I, a Catholic, can find it in my heart to wish that Monmouth's cause had won. No, Morrice, you must not blame her. The fault is ours, and I am rightly punished for my share in it. Constancy was a burgess virtue, fit for a tradesman. We despised it in ourselves; what right had we to expect it in the women we surrounded?" He checked his vehement flow abruptly, and came and stood over me. "And yet, Morrice," he said, with a smile that was infinitely tender and sad, "and yet I loved her, with a sweet purity in the love, and a humble thankfulness for the knowledge of it, loved her as any country bumpkin might love the girl who rakes a furrow at his side." "And in return," I said bitterly, "she betrayed you to Count Lukstein?" He nodded "yes," and sat down again on his bench. "Why?" "Long before the duel. She had no suspicion of the consequences of her words," he said hastily. "She had no hand in this plot." "Why?" I repeated. He looked at me, imploring mercy. "I understand," said I. "Ah, no!" he said quickly; "your suspicions outstrip the truth. I think so," and again with a curiously pleading voice, "I think so. The man purred more softly than the rest, and so she----" He broke off in the middle of the sentence and began anew. "I must lay the whole truth bare, I see that. Only the shame of it cuts into me like a knife." He paused, and great beads of sweat broke out upon his forehead.