He still kept gazing at me with that puzzling expression, only now there seemed to be more of tenderness than of incredulity in it. "You seem to have great faith in things coming out right." "Oh, but it's true," I urged. "They will, if only you will go back and face the thing." Slowly he shook his head. "Yes, it may be true. It may even be workable in some cases, but I have got too far away from what is right ever to get back. If I should try I would only succeed in doing some one else still greater wrong--a wrong that even you, with all your awful sense of justice, could not ask me to do." He turned from me, and sat for a little while gazing straight before him, and I looked at his stern profile set against the window glass, saw the shift of expression upon it, and knew that he was thinking. At last, turning to me again, as if there had been no interval between his words, "But this much I can do," he said. "Even if I can not quite get back to the great wrong, I will go back as far as I can in honor to set this thing right. I will give myself up--" He waited a moment, then added: "On one condition; that you will promise never to say a word of what I have told you to-night." "But," I protested, "then how will they ever know you are innocent?" "They won't." "Oh, but then you will be--" I began, with a wail. "Wait, don't speak, don't answer until I have asked you another question," and the strong touch of his hand held me quiet. "Suppose I can't make it come out right--don't you think it is better to make a strike to get as near to the right as I can, instead of going on, getting deeper and deeper into the wrong?" "Yes," I whispered. "Don't you?" "I don't know," he said slowly. "I only know that since I have seen you I can't go on. After being with you only for this little while, after what you have told me, I can't go to her." We faced each other in silence. My hands were clasped tightly in my lap but my heart went out to him in gratitude and thankfulness. Then, bending a little toward me, "Now, have I your word?" he gently asked. I could have promised him more than my word in that moment. He smiled. "I know that I can trust you. I have seen that you have a loyal heart; but this promise shan't cost you anything. I shall answer no questions. Now, I shall have to send a message to Senora Valencia." "Oh, do not," I begged. "She will stop you from going back. You don't know what she is capable of; she can do anything!" "No one can undo what you have done," he said. "She will not stop me. I must send her a word to tell her she is to go away on the lugger without me." "But why?" I cried. "I am afraid to have you go near the house. I know I shall never see you again." "Come, you must be brave. I am only going to write a line and slip it under the gate. We must not be cruel if we are righteous, you know."