"It was to tell you about your son," Moya reminded him.
"Ah, poor fellow! God help him, for I can't."
"Are you quite sure?" said Moya gently, and for once rather nervously as well.
"Sure? Of course I'm sure! Why, what can I do?" cried the other, with sudden irritation as suddenly suppressed. "Hiding—hunted—with every hand against me but yours—I'd help him if I could, but I can't."
"So he's to go to prison instead of you?"
Moya spoke quietly, but with the more effect; indeed, she was herself beginning to feel surprised at her success with a desperate man in vital straits. He was more amenable than she had imagined possible. That he should parley with her at all was infinite encouragement. But now there came a pause.
"I see what you're driving at," he cried savagely at last. "You want me to give myself up! I'll see you—further."
The oath was dropped at the last moment—another strange sign—but the tone could not have been stronger. Yet the mere fact that he had seen her point, and made it for her, filled Moya with increasing confidence.
"I don't wonder," she had the tact to say. "How could you be expected to go back—to that—of your own free will? And yet what can be worse than waiting—waiting till——"
"I'm taken, eh? Is that what you want to say? They shall never take me alive, curse them; don't you trouble about that!"