But she was not to be stopped, now that her misery had at last found words.
"You do not understand my position, perhaps," she continued. "You do not see that it has been my hand, and mine only, which, from the first, has slowly, remorselessly pushed this man back from the point of safety, till now, now, I am called upon to drag from his hand the one poor bending twig to which he clings, and upon which he relies to support him above the terrible gulf that yawns at his feet. You do not see——"
"Pardon me," interposed Mr. Ferris again, anxious, if possible, to restore her to herself. "I see enough to pity you profoundly. But you must allow me to remark that your hand is not the only one which has been instrumental in hurrying this young man to his doom. The detectives——"
"Sir," she interrupted in her turn, "can you, dare you say, that without my testimony he would have stood at any time in a really critical position?—or that he would stand in jeopardy of his life even now, if it were not for this fact I have to tell?"
Mr. Ferris was silent.
"Oh, I knew it, I knew it!" she cried. "There will be no doubt concerning whose testimony it was that convicted him, if he is sentenced by the court for this crime. Ah, ah, what an enviable position is mine! What an honorable deed I am called upon to perform! To tell the truth at the expense of the life most dear to you. It is a Roman virtue! I shall be held up as a model to my sex. All the world must shower plaudits upon the woman who, sooner than rob justice of its due, delivered her own lover over to the hangman."
Pausing in her passionate burst, she turned her hot, dry eyes in a sort of desperation upon his face.
"Do you know," she gurgled in his ear, "some women would kill themselves before they would do this deed."
Struck to his heart in spite of himself, Mr. Ferris looked at her in alarm—saw her standing there with her arms hanging down at her sides, but with her two hands clinched till they looked as if carved from marble—and drew near to her with the simple hurried question of:
"But you?"