Nan stood still for a bewildered instant, while Napier went forward.
"So that's why!" he said. "Very well, then, you've got to know!" Leaning on the railing there beside her in the windy moonlight, he told her what Singleton had found in Greta's room.
Before he had gone far Napier was acutely aware of the girl's stiffening; aware of a withdrawal, infinitesimal as expressed in the body, a chasm as between their souls. He could feel that she was thinking: "Gavan looked on! He allowed that baseness at Lamborough!" That he should put a false construction upon what was found was the least of his misdoing.
"Oh, yes,"—she turned sharply away—"she told me you'd say that!"
Was it anger or suppressed tears that clouded her voice? Napier didn't know.
"What Greta must have suffered those horrible last hours at the McIntyres'! All to spare me, to save me the humiliation of knowing how you could treat my friend! She knew what that would mean to me. We,—" she gave him her eyes again—"we at home treated Greta like a princess. And she deserved it." As Napier made no attempt to rebut that view, she dropped her head, struggling an instant with some new enemy to self-control. "Greta puts me, too, to shame. That longing to see me again that made her risk coming back to England! Only to find that she might do me an injury, might compromise me! Imagine Greta in a thick veil, waiting about in the dusk to catch a glimpse—Saw me coming out of the shipping office with Madge. And when she found I was sailing on this boat, dropped everything to come along! Greta understands loyalty." She fell back upon ground evidently prepared for her. "Isn't it 'trying to undermine,' isn't it 'poisoning the mind,' if you ask me to put the worst construction on innocent things? Greta's diary! As she says, if you'd read my diary to my mother, you'd have me in the Tower. Oh, she is fair and just! She's been saying to me only to-night, that since I'll be going back there, perhaps living among them, I'm to remember it's only to the Germans the English are perfectly horrible. She was quite willing to leave me my illusions about you all till you yourself tear them away."
"Do you mind telling me how I've done that?" He tried to stem the torrent.
She steadied herself with an elbow on the railing.
"Haven't you told me yourself about going through my friend's trunks when she wasn't there? Oh, that—that, Gavan, was—" She turned suddenly and buried her face in her arm.
"Yes, it was a mistake."