He saw Vane wince and heard his teeth come together with a snap, and he saw his hands clench up into fists and his face pale, already turned ashen grey white that denotes utter bloodlessness. It was the face of a corpse with living eyes that looked at him with an expression which could not be translated into human words. Rayburn had looked death in the face many a time and laughed at it, but he didn't laugh now. As he said afterwards, he would have given anything to be a couple of miles away from Vane just then. He didn't speak because he had nothing to say, his thoughts would not be translated into language, and so there was nothing for it but to wait for Vane to speak.
For a few moments more the two men faced each other in silence, yet each reading the other's thoughts as accurately as though they had been talking with perfect frankness. Then Vane spoke in a slow, hard, grating voice which none of the congregation of St. Chrysostom would have recognised as that of the eloquent preacher of the Sermon on the Mount, to which Rayburn, who had heard that sermon, listened with a shock, which, as he told Carol later, sent a shiver through him from head to foot.
"Yes, Mr. Rayburn, I think I understand more fully now. My sister Carol—she has come here with you to-night, and I suppose I am right in thinking that you were to some extent responsible, quite innocently no doubt, for her disappearance about a year ago. Is that so?"
"Yes," said Rayburn, "that's so, and that's why I wouldn't shake hands with you. I did take her away. She has been round the world with me, travelling with me as my wife, and she isn't my wife, and—well, that is about all there is."
"And why isn't she your wife?" exclaimed Vane, with an unreasoning burst of anger. Then, after a little pause, he went on in a tone that was almost humble.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Rayburn, that was a foolish thing to say, as most things said in haste and anger are. You only did what any other man with no ties and plenty of money would have done under the circumstances. Forgive me! Only the hand of Providence itself saved me from committing, without knowledge, an infinitely greater sin than yours. I suppose Carol has told you how I met her and what happened, and, of course, my father has told you about my getting out of the cab that night at the top of the Gardens? No, no, I have nothing to forgive, nothing to say except, as Carol's brother, to ask you why you have brought her here? That, at least, I think I am entitled to ask."
"Maxwell," replied Rayburn, pulling himself together as a man might do after being badly beaten in a fight, "I have been in a good many bad places in my lifetime, but this has been about the worst, and I'd a damned sight sooner—I beg your pardon, you know what I mean—I would very much rather been talking to a South American Dago with a pistol at my head, than having this talk with you, but it's got to be done.
"You know, I suppose, or at any rate your father knows, how I met Carol and how we fixed it up to go away together. I admit, without any reserve, that I did take her just as any man like myself, who had had a pretty hard time for a few years and had come back with a ridiculous superfluity of money, would have taken such a girl under such circumstances; that is brutal, but at any rate, it is honest. Well, we went round the world together, and it was only a fortnight ago—we've been back three weeks now—that I found out who she was."
"Not from her?" exclaimed Vane, with almost pitiful eagerness.
"No," replied Rayburn, "she would have died first. Over and over again I tried to get her to tell me who and what she was, because of course it was perfectly easy to see—well, you know what I mean—but she wouldn't. It was the one confidence that she never gave me; in fact, when I was trying to insist upon it, she told me if I opened the subject again, she would leave me there and then, whatever happened to her."