'You could not know there was anything between us'; she emphasised the words deliberately. Drake mistook the intention of the emphasis. 'But was there,' he exclaimed, 'at the time? I didn't think of that, Miss Le Mesurier--' 'Oh no, no!' she interrupted. 'Not at the time.' The man was impracticable, and yet his very impracticability aroused in a measure her admiration. 'So you would have shot him just the same, had you known?' 'Shot him?' asked Drake almost absently. 'Yes.' 'Didn't I tell you? I beg your pardon. I didn't shoot him at all. I hanged him.' Clarice was stunned by the words, and the more because of the dull, seemingly callous accent with which they were spoken. 'You hanged him!' she whispered, dropping the words one by one, as though she was striving to weigh them. 'Yes. I have been blamed for it,' he replied with no change of voice. 'People said I was damaging the prestige of the white man. The argument bothered me, I confess, but I think they were wrong. I should have damaged that prestige infinitely more if I had punished him secretly or--' 'Oh, don't!' she cried, with a sharp interruption, and she stared at him with eyes dilating in horror, almost in fear. 'You can discuss it like that,--the man I had been engaged to,--you hanged him!' She ended with a moan of actual pain and covered her face with her hands. On the instant Drake woke to a full comprehension of all that he had said, and understood something of the humiliation which it meant to her. Clarice was sitting huddled in her chair, her fingers pressed lightly on her eyes, while now and again a shiver shot through her frame. 'Still I was bound to tell her,' Drake thought. He waited for a little, wondering whether she would look up, but she made no movement. An emerald ring upon her finger caught the light and winked at him maliciously, leering at him, he fancied. There was nothing more for him to say, and he quietly went out of the room. The click of the door-handle roused Clarice. She saw that the room was empty, and, drawing a breath of relief, started out of her chair. Standing thus she heard Drake's footsteps descending the stairs, and after a pause the slamming of the hall-door. Then she went to the fireplace and knelt down close to it, warming her hands at the blaze. 'The degradation of it!' she whispered. CHAPTER VII