She turned upon him like some wild creature at bay.
"Why are you waiting? Why haven't you had him arrested and tried and condemned, like any other common murderer?"
He regarded her gravely, as the hard, white moonlight permitted. No man ever plumbs a woman's heart in its ultimate depths; least of all the heart of the woman he knows best and loves most.
"You seem to overlook the fact that I am his daughter's lover," he said, as if the simple fact settled the matter beyond question.
"And you have never sought for an explanation?—beyond the one which would stamp him as the vilest, the most inhuman of criminals?" she went on, ignoring his reason for condoning the crimes.
"I have; though quite without success, I think—until to-day."
"But to-day?" she questioned, anxiously, eagerly.
He hesitated, picking and choosing among the words. And in the end he merely begged her to help him. "To-day, hope led me over into the valley of a great shadow. Tell me, Elsa, dear: is your father always fully accountable for his actions?"
Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, and there were tense lines of suffering about the sweet mouth.
"You have guessed the secret—my secret," she said, with the heart-break in her tone. And then: "Oh, you don't know, you can't imagine, what terrible agonies I have endured: and alone, always alone!"