“You ran right up against—­what?”

“Against the truth.  It came in a flash—­just like that.”  He snapped his fingers.  “You’re selling yourself—­to get me off.”

She seemed to grow straighter, taller.  For the minute he saw nothing but the blaze of her eyes.

“Well?  Why shouldn’t I?  My mother sold herself—­to get a man off.  He was my father.  I’m proud of her.  She did the best she could with her life.  I’m doing the best I can with mine.”

“But I shouldn’t be doing the best I can with mine—­if I let you continue.”

“Isn’t it too late for you to stop me?  If I’ve sold myself as you put it, the price has been paid in.  Mr. Conquest has secured the evidence that will acquit you.  It will be used.  That’s all I care about—­much.”

She saw the hot color surge into his cheeks and brows.  It seemed to her that his eyes grew red as the blood left his lips.  She had never before been called on to confront a man angry with a passion beyond his control, but instinct told her what the signs were.  Instinct told her, too, that, however confused his own sensations might be, his anger was not so much resentment against anything she might have done as it was despair at having lost her.  She had guessed already that he would be seized with a blind impulse to strike, as soon as he came to a realizing sense of her action; though she had not expected the moment of his fury till after he went free.  Till then, she had thought, he would be partially unconscious of his pain, just as a soldier fighting will run along for a while without feeling a bullet in his flesh.  The anticipation of an awakening on his part some time enabled her to see beyond the madness of this instinct, even though the words he threw at her struck like stones.  The very fact that she could see how he labored with himself to keep them back gave her strength to take them without flinching.

“You ... dared...?  Without ... my ... permission...?”

“I’d done so many things without your permission that it seemed I could venture that far.”

“You were wrong.  It was—­too far.”

“It wasn’t too far—­when I loved you.”

She uttered the words in a matter-of-fact voice, without a tremor.  She foresaw their effect in bringing him to himself In his next words his tone had already softened slightly to one of protest.

“But I could have done it so much better—! so much more easily—! without——­”

“I could have done that too.  Mr. Conquest pointed it out to me.  He took no advantage of my ignorance.  As a matter of fact, I wasn’t ignorant at all.  I was extremely clear-sighted and wise.  My love for you made me so.  I knew—­I felt it—­that money might fail to do what I wanted.  But I knew too that there was one thing that wouldn’t fail.  If you were innocent—­and I wasn’t wholly sure that you were—­I knew there was one energy that would surely prove you so—­and that was Charles Conquest’s desire to have me as his wife.  I took the course in which there was least risk of failure—­and you see——­”