“Why?” Her question was serene.
“Because it was Robert Saxon that you loved. You sha’n’t touch Carter. I can’t let Carter touch you.” He was holding her wrists tightly, and pressing her away from him.
“I have never touched Carter,” she said, confidently. “They lied about it, dear. You were never Carter.”
In the white light, her upturned eyes were sure with confidence.
“Now, you listen,” she ordered. “You told me a case that your imagination has constructed from foundation to top. It is an ingenious case. Its circumstantial evidence is skilfully woven into conviction. They have hanged men on that sort of evidence, but here there is a court of appeals. I know nothing about it. I have only my woman’s heart, but my woman’s heart knows you. There is no guilt in you—there never has been. You have tortured yourself because you look like a man whose name is Carter.”
She said it all so positively, so much with the manner of a decree from the supreme bench, that, for a moment, the ghosts of hope began to rise and gather in the man’s brain; for a moment, he forgot that this was not really the final word.
He had crucified himself in the recital to make it easier for her to abandon him. He had told one side only, and she had seen only the force of what he had left unsaid. If that could be possible, it might be possible she was right. With the reaction came a wild momentary joyousness. Then, his face grew grave again.
“I had sworn by every oath I knew,” he told her, “that I would speak no word of love to you until I was no longer anonymous. I must go to Puerto Frio at once, and determine it.”
Her arms tightened about his neck, and she stood there, her hair brushing his face as though she would hold him away from everything past and future except her own heart.
“No! no!” she passionately dissented. “Even if you were the man, which you are not, you are no more responsible for that dead life than for your acts in some other planet. You are mine now, and I am satisfied.”