"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——"
A little gesture, triumphant in its suggestion, finished her sentence.
"What I see is this," Ford answered, thickly, "that I'm to hold my life at the cost of your degradation."
"Degradation? That's a hard word. But as applied to me—I don't know what it means."