“I could have done nothing without the help of that damned little black book. Don’t you see how the necromancy of the thing gripped me—how it has got its diabolical revenge? I told you not to ask me questions,” Triona burst out fiercely. “You’re trying to make me defend myself.” He swung away, then laughed mirthlessly. “There seems to be a poetic justice in life. This room in which we have spent so many hours—it’s filled from floor to ceiling with my lies. Now I come with Truth, a sort of disinfectant. Perhaps I was driven back just to do it.” Olifant knitted a perplexed brow. Such fantastic psychologies were beyond his simple scientific habit of mind. He said: “You told me you came here on account of Olivia.” “Of course.” “Well—I must ask you again the same everlasting ‘Why?’ How could you dare to marry her with this lie on your soul?” “Yes. How dared I?” said Triona dejectedly. “But wouldn’t it have been quite simple to tell her the truth? You could have afforded to make a clean breast of it. You had proved yourself a remarkable man, apart from—from the Triona myth. And she is big enough to have stood it. Why, in God’s name, didn’t you trust her?” Triona threw out his hands helplessly. He did not know. Again he pleaded the unseen power that had driven him. When he had tried to resist, it was too late. “And now you think me a fool and a knave.” “I think you’re a fool,” said Olifant. “But not a scoundrel? I should like to know. You were the first man who really held out the hand of friendship to me. Till then people regarded me as an interesting specimen. You took me on my human side. I shall never forget coming to your sister’s house at Oxford. It was a new and wonderful atmosphere.” “If that is so,” said Olifant, “why didn’t it compel confidence—something of the real truth? I see you now telling my sister and myself your fairy tale; in the same fervid way as you’ve been telling me the truth this morning.” Triona rose and put on his jacket which now was dry. “How can I hope to make you understand, when I don’t understand myself? Besides,” he flashed, after shrugging himself impatiently into the garment, “haven’t I said I wasn’t seeking condonation or sympathy?” “You asked me whether I thought you a scoundrel,” said Olifant quietly. “Well, do you? Say I am, and have done with it.” “If I did, I don’t see what good it would do,” replied Olifant, a vague comprehension of this imaginative alien soul dawning on his mind. “You’re out for penance in the same crazy way you’ve been out for everything else. So you hand me the scourge and tell me to lay on. But I won’t. Also—if I committed myself by calling you an unmitigated blackguard, I couldn’t give you the advice that it’s in my heart to give you.” “And what’s that?” “To go back to Olivia and do your penance with her by telling and living the truth. _Magna est veritas et prævalebit._ Especially with a woman who loves you.”