Her eyes were fastened on his face, searching it wildly. A quick and terrible fear clamoured at her heart. Was there something in the past, something of which she had no knowledge, that could arise--_now_--to separate them from each other? That long-ago episode which had wrecked his youth--had the woman who had figured in it some material hold upon him? Could she--was it possible she could still come between them in some way? Ann had heard of such things. It seemed to her as though, betwixt herself and Eliot, there hovered a dim, formless shadow, vague and nebulous--a shadow which had crept silently out from some memory-haunted corner of the past. "Not bad news--for us?" she repeated quiveringly. "That depends upon how you choose to regard it," he replied. "Ann"--the ice broke up and he came to the point with a suddenness that was almost brutal--"why haven't you been straight with me?" "Straight with you?" she repeated wonderingly. "But I have been straight with you." "What a woman would call straight, I suppose!" he flung back. "Which means concealing everything that you think won't be found out." The indignant colour rushed up into her face, then receded, leaving it deadly pale. "But I have nothing to conceal," she answered. "Eliot--I don't understand--" "Don't you?" lie said, and the measureless contempt in his voice stung like the lash of a whip. "Think back a bit! Is there nothing you've kept from me which I ought to have known--nothing which makes the love you professed only last night no more than a sham?" For a moment Ann gazed at him in speechless silence. Then a low, passionate denial left her lips. "Nothing!" she said. Eliot took two strides towards her, and, gripping her by the shoulders, dragged her closer to the window so that the remorseless sunlight poured down on to her face. "Repeat that!" he commanded savagely. "Will you dare to repeat that--that unutterable lie?" His eyes, blazing with a terrible anger that seemed, to scorch her like a flame, searched her face with a scrutiny so pitiless, so implacably incredulous, that it was almost unbearable. But she endured it, and her clear golden eyes met his unflinchingly. "It was the truth!" she said. Her voice sounded to herself as though it came from a great distance away. It had an odd, tinny sound like cracked metal. He released her suddenly, almost flinging her from him, and she staggered a little, catching at the back of a chair to steady herself. His roughness roused her spirit. "Eliot! Are you mad?" she exclaimed. He stared at her, that burning ferocity of almost uncontrollable anger which had possessed him dying slowly out of his face. "Mad?" he said grimly. "No, I'm not mad--now. I was mad yesterday--when I believed in you." The stark agony in his voice smote her to the heart. "Eliot"--she moved towards him, her hands held out appealingly--"what have I done? Won't you tell me? I don't understand."