"I am not daring. Daring springs from the heart, you know. Moreover, though the knowledge of my love is old to me, old as weary days and sleepless nights can make it, it may be new to you, unless, somehow, my love has bridged the void, and made you responsive to my passion. Ah, don't be afraid, now," for David thought she shrank from him--though in very truth this maiden's soul was all a-quiver with the conviction that not so had Van Hupfeldt spoken, not so had his ardor shaken her. "I am not here to-day as your lover, as your avowed lover I would rather say, but only as your self-appointed guardian, as one who would save you from a fate worse than death. Listen now, and believe me, for I can prove the truth. Van Hupfeldt, who would marry you, is none other than Strauss, the man who married your sister." Violet's eyes dilated. Her lips parted as if to utter a shriek. David caught her by the wrist and drew her gently toward him. Before either of them knew what was happening, his arms were about her. "Be brave, there's a dear girl!" he whispered. "Be brave and silent! Can you listen? Tell me you are not afraid to listen." Again Violet was conscious that the touch of David Harcourt's arms was a different thing to the impetuous embrace of Van Hupfeldt. A sob came from her. She seemed to lose a little of her fine stature. She was becoming smaller, more timidly womanlike, so near this masterful man. "He married your sister," went on David. "He married Gwen in his own name of Van Hupfeldt, and the birth of their child is registered in that name. I wrote and told you of the certificates being in existence. He obtained them by bribery and a trick. That is nothing. Even if they are destroyed, they can be replaced by the proper authorities. I know where the child is living. I can take you to it. I can bring Dibbin, the agent, here, to face Van Hupfeldt and prove that he is none other than Strauss, your sister's husband and slayer. I can bring Sarah Gissing, your sister's servant, to identify him as the man whom poor Gwen loved as her husband and the father of her child. Were it not for my own folly, I could have brought you her diary--" "Her diary! Has it been found?" gasped Violet, lifting up her eyes to his in sheer amazement. "Yes. I found it." "But where, and how?" "It was fastened into the back of a picture, a mezzotint of Turner's." "In the back of a picture!" she murmured, with a certain strange dejection which David found adorable; nor should it be forgotten that the only time David possessed absolute and undeniable evidence of the presence of some unseen person in his flat, he had shot at and wounded a man. "Yes, dear--may I call you dear?" "And you have it?" "No." "No!" He felt a spasm of doubt in her very shoulders, a slight withdrawing from him, for Violet was ever being denied proof, the actual, tangible proof which alone can banish suspicion from a sorely-tried nature. "Van Hupfeldt stole it from the flat during my absence."