"I never said I took it from a hand-bag," he rejoined.
Madame Beattie broke down and laughed. She gave the bracelet a final snap.
"You're quite a clever boy," said she. "Alston Choate wouldn't have seen that if he'd hammered at it a week. Yes, it was in Esther's bag. I don't care much how it got out. The question is, how did it get in? How are you going to shield Esther?"
He was aware that Esther was looking at him in a breathless waiting. The hatred, he knew, must have gone out of her face. She was the abject human animal beseeching mercy from the stronger. That she could ask him whom she had repudiated to stand by her in her distress, hurt him like a personal degradation. But he was sorry for her, and he would fight. He answered roughly, at a venture, and he felt her start. Yet the roughness was not for her.
"No. I shall do nothing whatever," he said, and heard her little cry and Madame Beattie's assured tone following it, with an uncertainty whether he had done well.
"You're quite decided?" Madame Beattie was giving him one more chance. "You're going to let Esther serve her time in the dirty little man's paper? It'll be something more than publicity here. My word! Her name will fly over the globe."
He heard Esther's quick breathing nearer and nearer, and then he felt her hand on his arm. She had crept closer, involuntarily, he could believe, but drawn by the instinct to be saved. He felt his own heart beating thickly, with sorrow for her, an agonising ruth that she should have to sue to him. But he spoke sharply, not looking at her, his eyes on Madame Beattie's.
"I shall not assume the slightest responsibility in the matter. I have told you I took the necklace. You can say that in Weedon Moore's paper till you are both of you—" he paused.
The hand was resting on his arm, and Esther's breathing presence choked him with a sense of the strangeness of things and the poignant suffering in mere life.
"I sha'n't mention you," said Madame Beattie. "I know who took the necklace."