"If one of us is to die," he said, "let it be me. If you hadn't happened to see me and call me in when I was under the trees bidding good-bye to your window, by this time I might have found a way out of the difficulty without any scandal or trouble to you whatever. No one would have known that it wasn't an accident----" "I should have known." "But if you had, it would have been a relief----" "No. Because I--I hadn't heard the truth. I didn't understand at all. I thought you had done _one_ unscrupulous thing. I didn't dream your whole life was--what it is. I loved you as much as ever. It would have broken my heart if you----" "But now that you don't love me, it wouldn't break your heart." "I don't seem to have any heart," Annesley sighed. "It feels as if it had crumbled to dust. But it would break my life if you ended yours. If anything could be worse than what is, it would be that." "Very well, you can rid yourself of me in another way," the man answered. "You can denounce me--give me up to 'justice.' If you hand over the Malindore diamond to Ruthven Smith and tell him how you got it----" "You must know I wouldn't do that!" "Why not?" "Because I--couldn't." "It needn't spoil your life. No one could blame you. I would tell the story of how I deceived you. You could free yourself--get a divorce----" "Don't!" the girl cut him short. "I'm not thinking of myself. I'm thinking of you. I can't love you again, and I wouldn't if I could, now that I--know. You're a different man. The one I loved doesn't exist and never did; yet you've told me your secret, and I'm bound to keep it. I don't need to stop and reflect about that. But as for what's to become of me, and how we're to manage not to let people guess that everything's changed, I don't know! I must think. I must think all to-night, until to-morrow. Perhaps by that time I can decide. Now--I beg of you to go and leave me--this moment. I can't bear any more and live." He stood looking at her, but she turned her head away with a petulant gesture of repulsion; and lest her eyes might feel the call of his she covered them with her hands. Her hopelessness, her loathing of him enclosed her like a wall of ice. "So! The dream's over!" he said. "'This woman to this man'! What a farce--what a tragedy!" When she looked up again he had gone and the door between their rooms was shut. The moon no longer lit the high window. With Knight's going darkness fell. CHAPTER XX THE PLAN Annesley sat as Knight had left her for a long time--minutes, perhaps, or hours. But at last she was very tired and very cold, so tired that she threw herself weakly on the bed, in her dressing-gown, because she couldn't sit up. All through the rest of the dark hours she lay shivering, and did not even trouble to roll herself in the warm down coverlet spread lightly over the bed. It seemed right, somehow, that she should be cold and miserable physically. She did not care or wish to be comfortable.