“You say that, because it seems so to you.  I take another view of it.  Love to me does not necessarily mean marriage, any more than marriage necessarily implies love.  There have been happy marriages without love, and there can be honorable love that doesn’t ask marriage as its object.  If I married you now, I should seem to myself to be deserting a high impulse for a lower one.”

“There’s only one sort of impulse to love.”

“Not to my love.  I know what you mean—­but my love has more than one prompting, and the highest is—­or I hope it is—­to try to do what’s right.”

“But this would not be right.”

“I’m the only judge of that.”

“Not if we love each other.  In that case I become a judge of it, too.”

Once more she reflected.  In speaking she lifted her head and looked at him frankly.

“Very well; I’ll admit it.  Perhaps it’s true.  In any case, I’d rather things were clear to you.  It will help us both.  I’ll tell you what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.”

It was one of those occasions when a woman’s emotion is so great that she seems to have none at all.  As iron is said to come to a degree of heat so intense that it does not burn, so Miriam Strange seemed to herself to have reached a stage where the sheer truth, simple and without reserve, could bring no shame to her womanhood.  Words that could not have passed her lips either before that evening or after it escaped her in the subsequent minutes as a matter of course.

“I entered into your life twice, and each time I did you harm.  On the first occasion I turned you into Herbert Strange, and sent you out on a career of deception; on the second, I came between you and Evie, and brought you to the present pass, where you’re facing death again, as you were eight or nine years ago.  It’s no use to tell you that I wanted to do my best, because good intentions are not much excuse for the trouble they often cause.  But I’m ready to say this:  that whenever you’ve suffered, I’ve suffered more.  That’s especially true of what’s happened in the last six months.  And when I saw how much I had put wrong, it was a comfort to think there was something at least that I could put right again.”

“But you’ve put nothing wrong.  That’s what I should like to convince you of.”

“I’ve put you in a position of danger.  When I see that, I see enough to act upon.”

“It’s a very slight danger.”

“It is now, because I’ve made it slight.  It wasn’t—­before I went to Mr. Conquest.”

“You went to him—­what for?”

“He wanted me to marry him.  He had wanted it for a long time.  I told him I would do so, on condition that he found the evidence that would prove you innocent.”

Ford laughed harshly, and rather loudly, stopping suddenly, as though he had ceased to see the joke.

“So that’s it!  That’s why Conquest has been so devilishly kind.  I wondered at his interest—­or at least I should have wondered if I’d had the time.  As a matter of fact, I took it for granted that he should help me, as a drowning man takes it for granted that the chance passer-by should pull him out.  It wasn’t till this evening—­about half an hour ago—­By Jove!  I ran right up against it.”