In the pause Gilbert offered no word. 'And who told you about it? Evidently someone bent on mischief.' Again a pause. Gilbert stood unmoving. 'You still suspect me? You think I am lying to you? Do you know me no better than that?' It rang false, it rang false. His own voice sounded to him as that of an actor, who does his poor best to be forcible and pathetic. Yet what lie had he told? Could he say all he thought he had read in Thyrza's eyes? There was the parting that night beyond Lambeth Bridge; how could he speak of that? Was he himself not absolutely innocent? Had he not by a desperate struggle avoided as much as a glance of tenderness at the girl for whom he was mad with love? Gilbert spoke at length. 'I find it very hard to believe that you know nothing more. There are other things. As soon as we knew that she was gone, that Friday night, I came here to ask for you.' 'And why? Why to me?' 'Because she had been seen with you at the library, and people had begun to talk. They told me you were gone, and I asked for your address. They wouldn't give it me.' 'That meant nothing whatever. It was merely my landlady's idea of her responsibility to me.' 'Yes, that may be. On Saturday night a letter came from you, from Jersey.' 'Well? Was that the kind of letter I could have written if I had been such a traitor to you?' 'I don't know what the letter would have seemed to me if I had been able to judge it with my ordinary mind. I couldn't: I was going through too much. I believed it false. On Monday I went to Southampton, and from there at night to Jersey; it was the earliest that I could get there.' 'You went to Jersey?' 'I had no choice. I had to see you. And I found you had gone away on Saturday morning, gone to France. It was only Saturday night that I got your letter. There was no word in it about going to France; instead of that, you said plainly that you would be in Jersey for a week or more.' 'It is true. I see how I have made evidence against myself.' He said it with impatience, but at once added in a steadier voice: 'I wrote the letter and posted it on Friday night, when I had only been at St. Aubin's half a day. The very next morning I was compelled by restlessness to give up my idea of remaining there. When I wrote to you I had no thought of leaving the island.' How pleasant it was to be able to speak with unshadowed veracity! Walter all but smiled, and, when the other made no reply, he went on in a voice almost of pleading: 'You believe this? Is your mind so set against me that you will accuse me of any cowardice rather than credit my word?' A change came over Gilbert's face. It was wrung with pain, and as he looked up it seemed to cost him a horrible effort to speak. 'If,' he said, 'in a moment of temptation you did her the greatest wrong that a man can do to a woman, you would perhaps say and do anything rather than confess it.'