"Perhaps--love," she muttered, with a forced smile. But it did not deceive him. "You loathe him!" he said. "I may have loved him--once," she faltered. "You never loved him," he retorted. All the shyness of youth, all the bashfulness of man with maiden were gone. Under the weight of that thought, that dreadful thought, he had grown old in a few minutes. His tone was hard, his manner pitiless. "You never loved him!" he repeated, the very immodesty of her excuse confirming his fears. "And I ask you, what is it? What is it that is between you and him? What is it that gives him this power over you?" "Nothing," she stammered, pale to the lips. "Nothing! And was it for nothing that you were startled when you found me upstairs? When you found me watching you five minutes ago, was it for nothing that you flamed with rage----" "You had no right to be there." "No? Yet it was an innocent thing enough--to be there," he answered. "To be there, this morning." And then, giving the words all the meaning of which his voice was capable, "To have been there last night," he continued, "were a different thing perhaps." "Were you there?" Her voice was barely audible. "I was." It was dreadful to see how she sank under that, how she cringed before him, her anger gone, her colour gone, the light fled from her eyes--eyes grown suddenly secretive. It was a minute, it seemed a minute at least, before she could frame a word, a single word. Then, "What do you know?" she whispered. But for the wall against which she leant, she must have fallen. "What do I know?" She nodded, unable to repeat the words. "I was at the door of Basterga's room last night." "Last night!" "Yes. I had the key of his room in my hand. I was putting it into the lock when I heard----" "Hush!" She stepped forward, she would have put her hand over his mouth. "Hush! Hush!" The terror of her eyes, the glance she cast behind her, echoed the word more clearly than her lips. "Hush! Hush!" He could not bear to look at her. Her voice, her terror, the very defence she had striven to make confirmed him in his worst suspicions. The thing was too certain, too apparent; in mercy to himself as well as to her, he averted his eyes. They fell on the hills on which he had gazed that morning barely a fortnight earlier, when the autumn haze had mirrored her face; and all his thoughts, his heart, his fancy had been hers, her prize, her easy capture. And now he dared not look on her face. He could not bear to see it distorted by the terrors of an evil conscience. Even her words when she spoke again jarred on him. "You knew the voice?" she whispered. "I did not know it," he answered brokenly. "I knew--whose it was." "Mine?" "Yes." He scarcely breathed the word. She did not cry "Hush!" this time, but she caught her breath; and after a moment's pause, "Still--you did not recognise it?" she murmured. "You did not know that it was my voice?" Could it be that after all she hoped to blind him? "I did not."