“I have perhaps deserved that word ‘must,’ but it rankles. If you feel that my action yesterday prevents your believing what I tell you, we may as well close this conversation at once.”
“Spoken hastily, like a young man, but not unnatural, perhaps, in the circumstances. That you should have deceived me with such ready speciousness is scarcely calculated, however, to convince me of your good faith. Perhaps you can appreciate that.”
His cold tone and calm clear glance emphasized this, and it hurt. I made no reply and dropped my eyes.
“Can you see that?”
“You are quite entitled to take your own view of it, of course. But if the conditions were repeated, I should probably do it again.”
“Then you would do very wrong, Mr. Anstruther,” he said, with some warmth. “A falsehood is not only a sin in the eyes of the church, but wrong in every way.”
“I daresay you are quite right. I have never tried it as a policy before, and it has landed us in a pretty bad mess. But if you can show me how we could have got out of the hands of the police without lying, I’ll listen readily. And if we had got into them, the mess would have been much worse than it is.”
“If you had been candid with me yesterday, all the troubles since then would have been avoided.”
“They would also have been avoided if the storm had not overtaken us and we had not lost our way. But can we do any good by dissecting causes? I am man enough I hope not to shirk responsibility for my acts. I take all these lies on my own shoulders. They appeared to be necessary. The necessity no longer exists, and I shall tell you none. If you can’t believe me, there is an end of things. That’s all.”
He sat for perhaps a minute frowning in thoughtful silence. “Will you tell me exactly all that has occurred?”