"Shall I tell you?" he said tantalisingly. "Yes, I think I will." He paused, then finished quietly: "I happened to be in Switzerland last spring--when you were." There was no misunderstanding the intentional significance with which he spoke--no evading the impression that some definitely evil menace lay behind the brief statement of commonplace fact. To Ann it seemed as though some horror, lurking in the shadows of the fire-lit room, had suddenly stirred and were creeping stealthily towards her--impalpable but deadly, nauseous as the poisonous miasma rising from some dark and fetid pool. She shrank back, instinctively putting out her hand as though to ward off whatever threatened. "You--you?" she stammered. "Even I"--blandly. His gaze fastened on her face. "I spent a couple of nights--at the Hotel de Loup." Then, as she shrank still further away from him, he added lightly: "Dickens of a lonely place, too!" "Then--then--" Ann's throat felt dry and constricted, but she struggled for utterance. "Then it was you who told--" "Yes," he cut in quickly. "It was I who told Coventry about your little escapade up there with Tony Brabazon." "Ah--!" A choked cry broke from her lips, and she leaned helplessly against the wall behind her. "It was all quite simple," went on Brett coolly. "You see, I read the entry in the hotel register--and I happened to know that Brabazon had no sister." He rattled glibly on, recounting the episode of the Hotel de Loup with much the same air of inward entertainment with which he had narrated it to Coventry himself. When he had finished he looked across at her with a kind of triumph, no whit ashamed of himself. There was a long silence. Ann swallowed once or twice, trying to relieve the dreadful feeling of tightness in her throat. "I suppose," she said at last, speaking with difficulty, "I suppose you told Eliot--on purpose--to separate us?" She was staring at him with incredulous, horror-stricken eyes. This thing which he had done seemed to her unspeakable--treacherous and contemptible beyond all description. She had the same dazed appearance as some one who has just witnessed a terrible catastrophe--so terrible and unlooked-for as to be almost beyond credence. For an instant her stricken expression and slow, painful utterance brought the faintest possible look of shame to Brett's face. But it was only momentary and passed as swiftly as it had come. "Well," he confessed, "I didn't want you to marry Coventry, so I tried to stop it--naturally. As I told you--I want you to marry me." "And you could still want to marry me--thinking what you thought?" "Certainly I could"--promptly. "Don't you remember, I've told you more than once that the past doesn't count--that nothing a woman might have done would matter to me if I wanted her? I thought you would understand."