"One word!" Her interruption came in a tone he had never heard her use before. It was so quiet that it carried with it a chill like that of death. "Yes or no."
Boone felt a cold moisture on his hands and temples. A matter easy to explain had, of a sudden, become inexplicable. Looking back over lapsed years, all the quixotic urging of a false sense of justice had gone out of conduct which had then seemed so mandatory. The inescapable obligation to which he had responded seemed empty and twisted now. He could see only that he had insulted Happy with a half offer and been false to his avowed love of Anne and to his duty to himself.
That, at the time, he had been groping toward a callow and half-baked conception of honour failed now to extenuate his blunder, and if he himself could no longer understand it, how could he hope to make her do so?
His voice came in a dull monotone.
"Yes," he said, "I did. May I explain?"
In the credo of this girl's life fairness and generosity were twin cornerstones, and condemnation without hearing was an abhorrent and mean injustice. But the unadmitted poison of an accusation fought in secret had been insidiously undermining her sanity on the one central theme of her life, and Boone's affirmative had seemed to sever with a shock of complete surprise the anchor cable of her faith.
"No," she said, and for once it might have been the acid-marred voice of her mother, "that's all I need to know."
"But, Anne"—Boone took an impulsive step toward her and sought to speak sanely, while he held off the sense of chaos under which his brain staggered—"but, Anne, after all these years, you can't throw overboard your faith in me without giving me a chance to be heard."
She laughed bitterly, and of course that was hysteria, but to the man it seemed only derision.
"Until three minutes ago," she said, "I would have staked my life on my faith in you ... I did just about do it.... Now, I'm afraid ... there isn't any left ... to throw away."