"How much time?" she murmured, without shifting her gaze.
"Ah—that depends on ourselves: on you and me chiefly. That's what Garford admits. They can't do much now—they've got to leave the game to us. It's a question of incessant vigilance...of utilizing every hour, every moment.... Time's all I ask, and you can give it to me, if any one can!"
Under the challenge of his tone Justine rose to her feet with a low murmur of fear. "Ah, don't ask me!"
"Don't ask you——?"
"I can't—I can't."
Wyant stood up also, turning on her an astonished glance.
"You can't what—?"
Their eyes met, and she thought she read in his a sudden divination of her inmost thoughts. The discovery electrified her flagging strength, restoring her to immediate clearness of brain. She saw the gulf of self-betrayal over which she had hung, and the nearness of the peril nerved her to a last effort of dissimulation.
"I can't...talk of it...any longer," she faltered, letting her tears flow, and turning on him a face of pure womanly weakness.
Wyant looked at her without answering. Did he distrust even these plain physical evidences of exhaustion, or was he merely disappointed in her, as in one whom he had believed to be above the emotional failings of her sex?