She stood before him straight and pale, but under her rigid face he saw the tumult of her doubt and misery.
“I don’t want to be ungenerous; I don’t want to pry into her secrets. But things can’t be left like this. Wouldn’t it be better for me to go to her? Surely she’ll understand—she’ll explain.... It may be some mere trifle she’s concealing: something that would horrify the Farlows, but that I shouldn’t see any harm in...” She paused, her eyes searching his face. “A love affair, I suppose ... that’s it? You met her with some man at the theatre—and she was frightened and begged you to fib about it? Those poor young things that have to go about among us like machines—oh, if you knew how I pity them!”
“If you pity her, why not let her go?”
She stared. “Let her go—go for good, you mean? Is that the best you can say for her?”
“Let things take their course. After all, it’s between herself and Owen.”
“And you and me—and Effie, if Owen marries her, and I leave my child with them! Don’t you see the impossibility of what you’re asking? We’re all bound together in this coil.”
Darrow turned away with a groan. “Oh, let her go—let her go.”
“Then there is something—something really bad? She was with some one when you met her? Some one with whom she was——” She broke off, and he saw her struggling with new thoughts. “If it’s that, of course.... Oh, don’t you see,” she desperately appealed to him, “that I must find out, and that it’s too late now for you not to speak? Don’t be afraid that I’ll betray you.... I’ll never, never let a soul suspect. But I must know the truth, and surely it’s best for her that I should find it out from you.”
Darrow waited a moment; then he said slowly: “What you imagine’s mere madness. She was at the theatre with me.”
“With you?” He saw a tremor pass through her, but she controlled it instantly and faced him straight and motionless as a wounded creature in the moment before it feels its wound. “Why should you both have made a mystery of that?”