"Order breakfast for eight o'clock," she said calmly.
He ignored her audacity. "You will do three unforgivable things by telling the truth. You will put your people into a panic, hold me up to the ridicule of the earth and hurt your reputation beyond any sort of repair. It isn't sporting to do the first two and I'm not going to let you do the other."
"My reputation——" She began, and stopped.
The word sporting dried up her words. It opened up a new point of view. She had harped on this word in regard to him. She held it in high respect. For the first time in their long and fluctuating struggle of temperament he had scored.
He saw it and went on quickly. "Because of your people and because of you,—I can always disappear,—I'm going to carry on your lie through thick and thin. If, when I've finished what I've got to say, you go back and tell them that you're not married to me I shall say that you're lying again. I shall be believed and I shall first break every bone in York's body and thrash the paragraphist into a hospital. Then, as soon as McLeod's had his three days' leave you, being a sportsman, will come aboard the Galatea with me,—Malcolm's waiting,—and we will make a bee line for the Irish Coast and get married in Queenstown. It's impossible in this country now."
"And then, what?" she asked.
"Africa for me, home for you,—or anywhere else you like."
"I see. And are you childish enough to think that this precious plan will kill scandal?"
"Yes. Why not?"
"Divorce,—what of that?"