"Nonsense!"
"I am, though: harbouring the fugitive! They can't put salt on him, so they have on me."
Moya stood looking at him in a long silence, but only hardening as she looked: patience, pity and understanding had gone like so many masts, by the board, and the wreckage in her heart closed it finally against him in the very hour of his more complete disaster.
"And how long have you known this?" she inquired stonily, though the answer was obvious to her mind.
"Ever since we met them on our ride home. They showed me their warrant then. The trooper had done thirty miles for it this afternoon. They wanted to take me straight away. But I persuaded Harkness to come back to dinner and return with me later without fuss."
"Yet you couldn't say one word to me!"
"Not just then. Where was the point? But I arranged with Harkness to tell you now. And by all my gods I've told you everything there is to tell, Moya!"
"You should have told me this first. But you tell nothing till you are forced! I might have known you were keeping the worst up your sleeve! I shouldn't be surprised if the very worst were still to come!"
"It's coming now," said Rigden, bitterly; "it's coming from you, in the most miserable hour of all my existence; you must make it worse! How was I to know the other wouldn't be enough for you? How do I know now?"
"Thank you," said Moya, a knife in her heart, but another in her tongue.