To hesitate, to temporize, even to soften his recital, would mean another failure in the telling of it. He must plunge in after his old method of directness, even brutality, without preface or palliation.
Here, at all events, brutality were best. If his story appalled and repelled her, it would be the blow that would free her from the thraldom of the love he had unfairly stolen. If she turned from him with loathing, at least anger would hurt her less than heartbreak.
“Do you remember the story Ribero so graphically told of the filibuster and assassin and the firing squad in the plaza?” As he spoke, Saxon knew with a nauseating sense of certainty that his brain had never really doubted his identity. He had futilely argued with himself, but it was only his eagerness of wish that had kept clamoring concerning the possibility of a favorable solution. All the while, his reason had convicted him. Now, as he spoke, he felt sure, as sure as though he could really remember, and he felt also his unworthiness to speak to her, as though it were not Saxon, but Carter, who held her in his arms. He suddenly stepped back and held her away at arms’ length, as though he, Saxon, were snatching her from the embrace of the other man, Carter. Then, he heard her murmuring:
“Yes, of course I remember.”
“And did you notice his look of astonishment when I came? Did you catch the covert innuendoes as he talked—the fact that he talked at me—that he was accusing me—my God! recognizing me?”
The girl put up her hands, and brushed the hair back from her forehead. She shook her head as though to shake off some cloud of bewilderment and awaken herself from the shock of a nightmare. She stood so unsteadily that the man took her arm, and led her to the bench against the wall. There, she sank down with her face in her hands. It seemed a century, but, when she looked up again, her face, despite its pallor in the moonlight, was the face of one seeking excuses for one she loves, one trying to make the impossible jibe with fact.
“I suppose you did not catch the full significance of that narrative. No one did except the two of us—the unmasker and the unmasked. Later, he studied a scar on my hand. It’s too dark to see, but you can feel it.”
He caught her fingers in his own. They were icy in his hot clasp, as he pressed them against his right palm.
“Tell me how it happened. Tell me that—that the sequel was a lie!” She imperiously commanded, yet there was under the imperiousness a note of pleading.
“I can’t,” he answered. “He seemed to know the facts. I don’t.”