"Enemies?" He shrugged his shoulders. "No, I think he would not consider me as an enemy now."
"And yet you never forgave him?"
"No, never." Again his denial was emphatic. After a moment, seeing her bewilderment, he proceeded to explain. "If he had apologized, if he had retracted the insult, then it is possible that a reconciliation might have been effected between us."
"But he didn't?" said Chris. "Then what happened? Did he do nothing at all?"
"For a long time—nothing," said Bertrand.
"And then?"
"Then," very simply he made reply, "he ruined me."
"Bertie!" She gazed at him with tragedy dawning in her eyes. "He ruined you! He!"
"He supplied the evidence against me," Bertrand said. "But it was clever. He spread a net—so"—he flung out his hands with an explanatory gesture—"a net that I see not nor suspect, and then when I am entrapped he draw it close—close, and—I am a prisoner." He shut his teeth with a click, and for an instant smiled—the smile of the man who fights with his back against the wall.
But the tragedy had grown from shadow to reality in the turquoise blue eyes of the girl beside him. "Oh, Bertie," she said, with a break in her voice, "then it was all my fault—mine!"