"You did," she quietly replied.
"I? What do you mean?"
For the first time the ghost of a smile hovered round her lips.
"You called me Anita! You didn't know that, did you?"
"Did I really? What a blundering fool I have been from first to last!" Cyril exclaimed remorsefully.
"You need not reproach yourself. For some days I had been haunted by fragmentary visions of the past and before I saw you yesterday, I was practically certain that you were not my husband. Oh! It was not without a struggle that I finally made up my mind that you had deceived me. I told myself again and again that you were not the sort of a man who would take advantage of an unprotected girl; yet the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that my suspicions were correct. Then I tried to imagine what reason you could have for posing as my husband, but I could think of none. I was in despair! I didn't know what to do, whom to turn to; for if I could not trust you, whom could I trust? When I heard my name, it was as if a dim light suddenly flooded my brain. I knew who I was. I remembered leaving Geralton, but little by little I realised with dismay that I was still completely in the dark as to who you were, why you had come into my life. It seemed to me that if I could not discover the truth, I should go mad. Then I decided to appeal to Miss Trevor. She was a woman. She looked kind. She would tell me! I was somehow convinced that she did not know who I was, but I said to myself that she would certainly have heard of my disappearance, for I could not believe that Arthur had allowed me to go out of his life without moving heaven and earth to find me."
"You did not know——?"
Anita shook her head.
"No; it was Miss Trevor who told me that Arthur was dead—that he had been murdered." She shuddered convulsively. "You see," she added with pathetic humility, "there are still so many things I do not remember. Even now I can hardly believe that I, I of all people, killed my husband." Great tears coursed slowly down her cheeks.
Cyril ached for pity of her.