"And you'll not run away."

"Oh, no, I'll not run away! I shall never see you again if I can help it, but now that you are here I shall look at you and listen to the sound of your voice."

"And to what I have to say. You hate Mrs. Balfame. You are bored to death with her. You are appalled. You have found her out for what she is. You are going to marry her out of pity and because you are too honourable to desert a woman who will always be under a cloud, even if you had it in you to break your word; and because you have a twisted romantic notion about being true to an old if mistaken ideal--one of a set that has flourished like hardy old-fashioned annuals under the dry soil of hustle and ambition and devotion to your profession. You had fallen in love--or thought you had, which amounts to the same thing for the moment--after so many years of dry spiritual celibacy, and it had been a wonderful revelation--and an inner revolution that made you immensely interested in yourself for the first time. You were exalted; you lived for several months at a pitch above the normal, automatically registering other impressions but only half cognisant of them. And now--you feel that to the love born in delusion and slain by truth you owe the greatest sacrifice a man can make."

He had stared at the ground during the first part of her speech, and then raised his eyes sharply, his glance changing to amazement and a flush mounting to his hair.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. But he would make no other answer, and once more he dropped his glance to the snow.

"Are you going to marry her?"

"If she is acquitted."

"And if not?" Her voice broke out of its even register.

He made an abrupt movement, and she cried out:

"I know! I know! Polly told me--Sam tells her everything. He suspects you. He knows that Broderick does. But you don't intend to wait for his denunciation. Mrs. Balfame told that to Polly too. You intend to say you did it. She said she wouldn't let you--oh, wouldn't she!--but you had told her that you would make up a plausible story and stick to it. And I know that you can't prove an alibi. Tell me,"--she came closer and her voice was almost threatening,--"do you really intend to take that crime on your shoulders if she is convicted."

"Yes."

"Oh! Oh! Men will be sentimental fools until--well, so long as they are born of fools and women. We are made all wrong!" She threw her m.u.f.f on the ground and beat her hands together. Her eyes were blazing. There was a curious red glow in their olive depths. "Well, listen to me: You are not going to do this thing, although I really believe you'd like to do it as a sort of penance. She could not prevent such a monstrous sacrifice if she would, but I can. Just bear that in mind. If you come forward with any such insane proposition, I will make a fool of you before all the world. If Mrs. Balfame is acquitted, well and good; but if she is not, then I'll betray a confidence and run the risk of killing some one myself--but I'll get the truth. Just remember that, and keep off the witness-stand."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I know where to get the truth."

"You mean that Dr. Anna thinks Mrs. Balfame did it--that Mrs. Balfame confessed to her and that you can make the poor woman betray her friend while she is still too weak to resist. Well, you are all wrong. I know that Mrs. Balfame did not kill Balfame. If you want the reason for my knowledge,--and I know I can trust you,--Mrs. Balfame was out that night, and she did take a revolver and fire it. I found it in the house on the night following her arrest. It was a thirty-eight. There was one bullet missing. It was found in the tree. Balfame was killed by a forty-one. She did not go out to shoot Balfame, but because she thought she saw a burglar in the grove. Her revolver went off accidentally--and she is the best shot out at the Club. But you will readily understand my reasons for suppressing these facts."

Alys had turned her profile and was staring at a tree whose limbs creaked now and again with their weight of snow, sending down a powdery shower. Her thick short lashes were almost together before a gleaming line of olive.

"Oh! Who was her confederate?"

"She hasn't the least idea as to the ident.i.ty of the person beside her.

It was dark, and she was too much excited. Naturally, she would be very glad to know."

"Well, suppose we dismiss that part of it. We should never get anywhere.

Only--don't take the stand and make a dramatic confession."

"Dramatic?" Once more the red tide rose. His blue eyes snapped.

"Melodramatic would perhaps be the better word. Sarah and I are hot on the trail of the right word. But tell me honestly--shouldn't you feel rather a fool? It is such a very theatric--stagey--thing to do."

"Oh!" He wheeled about and kicked a fallen log. "Do you suppose I have given a thought to that aspect of it?"

"No, more is the pity, but as you have a good sense of humour, I rather wonder at it. However--these are not the only things I followed you into the woods to say."

"You had it in your mind, then, to find out if what Mrs. Balfame told Mrs. c.u.mmack was true--that I purposed to free her one way or another?"

"Yes. I merely waited for the lead. I told you in the beginning that I did not care what I might confess to, or how angry I made you. What does it matter?"

"You cannot make me angry, although there are some things I cannot discuss with you."

"Of course not. Let us ignore Possible Sacrifice Number Two, and a.s.sume that Mrs. Balfame is acquitted,--which no doubt will be the case; few are worrying; and further a.s.sume that you will marry her; that she will marry you is the way she put it, not being an artist in words. Once more we will dismiss both subjects. Yes?"

She was stooping to recover her m.u.f.f, and he noticed that her hands were shaking and that the dusky pink was in her cheeks for the first time.

"I am only too ready. But--there is little else for us to talk about!"

"Yes, there is! When people are on their deathbeds they can afford to be truthful, and you have dug your grave and mine."

She was erect once more and she looked at him steadily, although her breath was short and her cheeks blazing.

"What do you mean by that?" His eyes no longer looked like blue steel.

They were flashing, and a curious wave of mobility pa.s.sed over his face.

"I mean that you love me now. I think you always loved me--when we spent so many hours together in perfect companionship--when you found so much in me that responded to so many of your own needs. But for the time being this was only a surface impression. It was unable to strike down to--to your soul, because between your outer and inner vision was the delusion. You had cherished some sort of ideal since boyhood, and when for the first time in your busy life you met a woman who seemed to materialise it--you never once had a half-hour's conversation with her!--you automatically rose to the opportunity to discharge a youthful obligation. Isn't that true?"

He would not answer, and she continued:

"You pa.s.sed me over because you had to be rid of the delusion first, bag and baggage. There is only one way to get rid of an old delusion like that, and unconsciously you took it! The pity of it is, in our case, that you compromised yourself so promptly, instead of waiting--well, for ten weeks!"

"I had already asked Mrs. Balfame to get a divorce and marry me."

"Oh! That night you walked home with her from Dr. Anna's cottage?"

"You saw us? Yes, that was the time."

"The first time you had ever talked alone with her? I know that you dined there often, but didn't Dave usually do the talking?"

"Yes."

"And Mrs. Balfame smiled like St. Cecilia and attended to your wants."

"Oh!"

"It was like you to think you couldn't go back on even an Elsinore Avenue flirtation. But once more--it is a terrible pity that you did not delay your formal offer for ten weeks. Then you would have buried the last and the supreme folly of your youth--with a sigh perhaps, but you would have buried it. Isn't that true?"

"It is true that something incredibly youthful seems to have persisted in me beyond its proper limits, and then to have died abruptly. G.o.d knows I have no youth in me to-day."

"That may well be, but it need not have been. Youth does not die with the earlier illusions. If all had gone well, you would have been reborn into a saner and more conscious youth. Tell me--" Her voice trembled, but she moved forward resolutely and laid her m.u.f.f against his chest; he could feel the working of her hands, and eyes and cheeks betrayed the excitement that pride still suppressed. "Tell me,--if you had waited, if you could have decently buried that old illusion and forgotten--and--and married me,--should you have felt very old?"

"I should have felt immortal."

He caught her hands from her m.u.f.f and flung them about his neck and lifted her from the ground and kissed her as if they both stood on the pinnacle and had but a moment before plunging down to mortal death.

When he released her a trifle, his face was illuminated. It no longer looked preternaturally strong; neither did it look as young as she had seen it look in moments of mental relaxation.