"Now I will tell you the truth," she cried. "I will give you the truth about your dead man and his book. It was I who worked and slaved for that dead man. Without me his book would never have been written. While you, who call yourself his friend, who rant about being his defender, were loitering about the continent, I was at his bedside, tending him and watching him, wearing myself out for him, and keeping the life in him hour by hour. And it was to me, on his last day, that he gave the book, with his own hands made me take it, what there was of it. It was as much mine as his, he declared, and he gave it to me with his own hand. Do you hear?--with his own hand! And it was I who worked over it, and rewrote it word for word, and took it and made it my own!" Repellier looked at her in silence for many minutes. "But why did you take it?" he asked. "It was mine! I had earned it!" Her eyes shone out at him hatefully. "I had earned it, I tell you!" Repellier seemed deep in thought; then a new firmness came about the lines of his mouth, and he looked up at her. "What new insult now?" she cried, tauntingly. "It may be too late to repair the injustice to the dead, Miss Vaughan; but I can and will at least step in to save the living!" "What do you mean by that?" "I mean Hartley! Have you ever stopped to think how you're ruining that man's life?" "Ruined?--_his_ life ruined?" "Yes, or it soon will be! And for his sake, remember, for his sake alone I can make one final proposal to you. It is the only thing to do, and it is very simple. I can offer you the choice of giving up Hartley, of releasing him absolutely and completely, on the one hand, or of giving up The Silver Poppy, and all it stands for, on the other!" She caught desperately at her last straw. "I would," she said. "I would--and could do it, but he--_he_ may refuse to accept his freedom!" "You must take the one or the other. As for Hartley himself, I think when everything is laid before him plainly, he will see just how to act!" "You," she cried in horror, "you wouldn't do that? You wouldn't tell him this--this lie?" "I should have to; you have made it necessary." "Him! Tell _him_!" she repeated, dazed. "You don't know how much he is to me," she added wistfully. It was no longer the face of a girl that looked up at Repellier. It was that of a woman, touched with age and sorrow. "That is no reason why _his_ life should be soured and broken, no reason why he should go on in the way he has been doing." "But they're lies! He would know they were lies!" she cried, her anger seizing her once more. "He would know they were lies! He knows and believes in me! He loves me! If I told him, he would _kill_ you! But you wouldn't tell him--you wouldn't tell _him_!" she cried again, reading nothing but relentlessness in the other's face. Repellier turned away from her, sick of it all, degraded by it, demeaned by her very passionate mendaciousness, but still resolute.