"How can I tell you?" She pressed her hands to her head and let them fall, meeting his look. "Your way of loving has never been my way. I could never make you understand how much I cared for you. You were everything to me, Philip; everything. I worshipped you. To have you indifferent, away, to lose you as I did, was to have nothing. But I still could teach Silas to respect you, to believe in you. No slight, no neglect of me could make me doubt you in—other ways. You were a man of honor among men; you had your place—until—last night." His glance wavered while she spoke. He felt an unaccountable weakness, a sudden tightness at the throat, and he reached back to a chair behind him and sank down. "Philip," she said, "how could you do it? How—could—you?" Tears rushed to her eyes; she brushed them impatiently away. "Think of it. To lend the _Phantom_, that clean, white yacht, to an opium smuggler; to make him your companion, friend; to be his willing tool. Oh, the shame of it! The shame of it! How could you?" He dropped his face in his hands. He felt suddenly that a court of justice might be more merciful than this proud, sweet, unrelenting woman. Then he made an effort to pull himself together. "I see," he said, "you saw the revenue boat and you accepted Forrest’s version. The captain of the cutter would have told you different. There is some suspicion hanging over Stratton, I admit, and those inspectors were looking for the _Phantom_, in fact they boarded her, merely because he happened to make the cruise with me over from Victoria. They of course found nothing." "No," she said slowly, "they found—nothing." There was a brief silence, then she went on. "I was there, in the old hotel, when you landed. I often walked that way when the house seemed too—unbearably—lonely. I liked the sounds of the tide. I believed, at first, the _Phantom_ had missed the dock in the smoke; then I thought it might be another boat, and some secret plot going on about the mills; something Paul should know. I am not a very brave woman, as you have often said, and I crept under the bar to wait. I was even afraid when I knew it was you. The key you dropped fell on my skirt. Afterwards, when the cutter came, I understood. And while the inspectors searched through these rooms, I went back to the ruin and lifted enough of the floor to get—the chest—through." "You did that? Oh, Louise, Louise!" He dropped his face again in his hands. He saw in a flash the magnitude of what she had done; the terrible moral as well as the physical effort it had cost her. But he felt more, in that bitter moment, that it was to her, the one in all the world from whom he had most cared to hide his dishonor, he owed his salvation. "Oh, Louise," he repeated, "and you did it for me."