"Why have you told me all this?" she asked in suspense, ready for flight.
"I want to prepare you. There's a way out of the trouble—the honest way for both of us: to make a clean breast of it together and together take what follows."
She was on her feet and away from him in a second.
"No, no," she cried in alarm, and Thresk mistook the cause of the alarm.
"You can't be tried again, Stella. That's over. You have been acquitted."
She temporised.
"But you?"
"I?" and he shrugged his shoulders. "I take the consequences. I doubt if they would be so very heavy. There would be some sympathy. And afterwards—it would be as though you had slipped down from Chitipur to Bombay and joined me as I had planned. We can make the best of our lives together."
There was so much sincerity in his manner, so much simplicity she could not doubt him; and the immensity of the sacrifice he was prepared to make overwhelmed her. It was not merely scandal and the Divorce Court which he was ready to brave now. He had gone beyond the plan contemplated at Bombay. He was willing to go hand in hand with her into the outer darkness, laying down all that he had laboured for unsparingly.
"You would do that for me?" she said. "Oh, you put me to shame!" and she covered her face with her hands.