He let go her hand. “Do you mind if I smoke? Perhaps you'll join me? No?”
He took his time while he lit his cigarette. Then, speaking slowly, “I can't believe all the evil that I've heard about this woman. And yet I ought. Every fresh person has told me something increasingly vile. To make a case against her, I have only to take all the trouble she's caused me. I meet her on a liner and part with her on landing; from that moment I have no peace. I'm pestered by strangers accusing and defending her. My room is entered by spies. I find an anonymous note pinned to my pillow. I'm lured out of London into the heart of the country on the pretext that she's in danger and I can help her. You know the rest. Until the happenings of tonight, the most probable explanation seemed to be that she had taken a secret fancy to me and had turned to me in her distress, when she found herself suspected of a crime. That theory won't hold water any longer.”
“It might.”
“It couldn't. You tell me she's in love with your husband.”
“Santa can be in love with as many men as serve her purpose. The only loyalty to which she's constant is the memory of her dead child.”
He shook himself irritably. “Nothing that you' or any one has told me explains her. She left on me an impression of nobility which absolutely contradicts all this later information. Until I met you, it almost seemed there was a conspiracy on foot to poison my mind. What she is said to have done may all be true, but I can't help searching behind her actions for a higher motive. You'd clear matters up if you'd tell me frankly how it is that you come into the picture.”
“The picture!” She shrank back from him like a timid child.
Controlling himself, he spoke patiently. “Do I need to be explicit? You ought to hate her. She's in love with your husband. When, a few hours ago, it was a case of warning her of the trap she was walking into, you were reluctant to give the signal. 'She wouldn't spare us,' you said; 'so why should you and I——?' And yet you're her accomplice. It was you whom I followed. It was you who, when you'd got me into this room, tried to hold me at the revolver's point.”
She buried her face in the hollow of her arm. Her voice came muffled. “It was I.”
He waited for her to say more. She made no sound—not even of sobbing.