Trent, who had not hitherto taken his eyes from her face, hung his head at the words. He did not raise it again as she continued. “But really it was simple shock and distress that made me give way, and the memory of all the misery that mad suspicion had meant to me. And when I pulled myself together again you had gone.” She rose and went to an escritoire beside the window, unlocked a drawer, and drew out a long, sealed envelope. “This is the manuscript you left with me,” she said. “I have read it through again and again. I have always wondered, as everybody does, at your cleverness in things of this kind.” A faintly mischievous smile flashed upon her face, and was gone. “I thought it was splendid, Mr. Trent—I almost forgot that the story was my own, I was so interested. And I want to say now, while I have this in my hand, how much I thank you for your generous, chivalrous act in sacrificing this triumph of yours rather than put a woman’s reputation in peril. If all had been as you supposed, the facts must have come out when the police took up the case you put in their hands. Believe me, I understood just what you had done, and I never ceased to be grateful even when I felt most crushed by your suspicion.” As she spoke her thanks her voice shook a little, and her eyes were bright. Trent perceived nothing of this. His head was still bent. He did not seem to hear. She put the envelope into his hand as it lay open, palm upwards, on his knee. There was a touch of gentleness about the act which made him look up. “Can you—” he began slowly. She raised her hand as she stood before him. “No, Mr. Trent; let me finish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am still feeling the triumph of beginning it.” She sank down into the sofa from which she had first risen. “I am telling you a thing that nobody else knows. Everybody knew, I suppose, that something had come between us, though I did everything in my power to hide it. But I don’t think any one in the world ever guessed what my husband’s notion was. People who know me don’t think that sort of thing about me, I believe. And his fancy was so ridiculously opposed to the facts. I will tell you what the situation was. Mr. Marlowe and I had been friendly enough since he came to us. For all his cleverness—my husband said he had a keener brain than any man he knew—I looked upon him as practically a boy. You know I am a little older than he is, and he had a sort of amiable lack of ambition that made me feel it the more. One day my husband asked me what I thought was the best thing about Marlowe, and not thinking much about it I said, ‘His manners.’ He surprised me very much by looking black at that, and after a silence he said, ‘Yes, Marlowe is a gentleman; that’s so’, not looking at me.