Shirley's face became set and hard. There was a contemptuous ring to her words as she retorted:
"Yet you admit that he may be innocent!"
"Even if I knew it as a fact, I couldn't move."
"Do you mean to say that if you had positive proof?" She pointed to the drawer in the desk where he had placed the letters. "If you had absolute proof in that drawer, for instance? Wouldn't you help him then?"
Ryder's face grew cold and inscrutable; he now wore his fighting mask.
"Not even if I had the absolute proof in that drawer?" he snapped viciously.
"Have you absolute proof in that drawer?" she demanded.
"I repeat that even if I had, I could not expose the men who have been my friends. It's noblesse oblige in politics as well as in society, you know."
He smiled again at her, as if he had recovered his good humour after their sharp passage at arms.
"Oh, it's politics—that's what the papers said. And you believe him innocent. Well, you must have some grounds for your belief."