She met his look. “Why do you say that? What do you mean?”
“I mean that you will never go anywhere with me again,” he said.
“But—but—” she stumbled over the words, hearing other words ringing like hammer-strokes in her brain,—“he will kill you—he has sworn to kill you if you go his way again.”
“Do you think you could prevent it,” said Rotherby.
She crumpled the paper in her hand. “Yes, I could—I would—somehow.”
“Very well. You can,” he said.
His manner baffled her. She looked at him uncertainly. “Tell me what you mean!” she said again.
He made a curious gesture, as of a player who tosses down his last card knowing himself a loser. “I mean,” he said, “that you can go in my place. Either that—or I go alone.”
Then she understood him, read the strategy by which he had sought to prove himself, and a deep pity surged up within her, blotting out all that had gone before.
“But I couldn’t possibly go,” she said. “It wouldn’t really help either, though—” she halted a little—“I know quite well what made you do it—and—I am grateful.”