Not one word did she utter, yet he knew she knew what was coming. So well did he know it that he prefaced his speech, when he got back some remnants of husky, audible voice, by a grave, slow nod of the head. “Yes,” whispered he brokenly, “yes, he accuses me, Audrey. He says--says--I took the cheques from his cheque-book--says I stole them. Good God!” He staggered to the little sofa, and fell on it, still with those clinging arms tightening round him, with the beautiful appealing eyes of his wife fixed in passionate tenderness and distress upon his face. But after the first few moments of dumb horror she rebelled at the thought that they could misjudge her Gerard so wickedly. She raised her head quickly, her eyes flashed, she laughed discordantly, angrily, as she looked into his open and still almost boyish face. “Gerard, Gerard, why do you trouble yourself about it? It’s ridiculous, you know! It’s farcical! You a thief! _You!_ It isn’t as if they didn’t know you! Why, this old Sir Richmond knows you too! Knows you and likes you! Or why should it always be you he sends for when he wants some one from the bank?” The young man looked up. Depressed, downcast, overwhelmed as he was, he felt the comfort of this indignation, of this amazement. He turned to her and took her lovely face in his hands, staring down tenderly into the big blue eyes, at the red, parted lips, at the soft waves of golden hair which had got loosened round her forehead. “Bless your little heart, Audrey, your anger does me good! Upon my word, when they all looked at me as they did, and questioned me as they did, and put it to me that I _must_ have been to blame somehow or other in this awful business, I--I--I almost began to think, at last, that I had!” “Gerard! How can you?” “Well, it came upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, you know, that I felt as if the heavens had fallen, or that I must be somebody else. I could only stare, and stammer, and behave, I suppose, just as a thorough-paced rascal would have done!” “Oh, Gerard!” “Well, I couldn’t help it. I was struck dumb.” “You should have been indignant. You should have told them what you thought of them!” “Well, I couldn’t. I was too much occupied with what they thought of me!” “Tell me just what they said.” “Well, they asked me who it was that took Sir Richmond his last cheque-book down. I said it was I. Then they asked me when it was, and if I remembered any of the circumstances of the journey. And after a little help--for I’ve been down there so often on one errand or another that it was difficult to find the exact date--I found that it was on a Saturday that I took the cheque-book, and that I came back home to have luncheon on my way. Then came a torrent of questions as to the time I stayed in the flat, and as to the people in it, and so on. They wanted to know whether any one was in the flat except you and me. There wasn’t, was there?”