"Play the man! I have been playing the part for you up to now. Now play it yourself. I need not tell you what it has meant to me to learn that my husband has been, as it were, a living lie. You know how I have believed in you, and what you have been to me because I believed in you. To have the object of one's faith collapse, like an air-pricked bladder, into nothingness, and worse than nothingness, is calculated to give one something of a shock. But I realise that this is not a moment for reproaches--that it is a time for deeds, not words. I realise, too, that I still owe my duty to you, as your wife, although, as my husband, you have failed in that which you owe to me. If you will take my advice, you will get up, and you will go at once to a first-rate lawyer; you will tell him the truth--the whole truth, mind--and you will place yourself entirely in his hands, even if he counsels you to surrender yourself to the police. I should do so without a moment's hesitation." "It's all very well to talk about surrendering to the police. It's easy enough in theory. It's I who shall hang, not you." "Tom, don't deprive me of all my faith in you; leave me something of my belief; try to be a little of a man. Don't add blunder to blunder--blunders which are worse than crimes--simply because you have not courage enough to be frank. As for the man who is waiting to see you in the drawing-room downstairs----" She was interrupted by a voice speaking from behind. "As for that man, is it not Paul Pry who says in the play, 'I hope I don't intrude?'" The speaker was my friend, the blackmailer. He had forced himself into my bedroom unannounced. CHAPTER VIII. MORE THAN HIS MATCH. Yes, unannounced. I am sure that if I had had the least suspicion of his approaching presence I should have kept him out by the simple expedient of turning the key in the door. As it was, there he stood, as bold as brass, holding in one hand the handle of the door which he had closed behind him, and in the other his hat, the brim of which he was pressing to his breast.