He answered her question with a reckless bang on the table.
"Because I have lived!" he cried. "If a bullet finds its way to my heart it will have warm lodging. I am a happy man, and my happiness stands high above the accidents of life and death. Eternity has no terrors but solitude, and for me there will never be such a thing as solitude again, because I have met my second self."
A hand was stretched out towards the bell, but Trafford intercepted it, and the bell was swept off the table on to the floor.
Gloria rose with flashing eyes.
"I asked you here in a spirit of camaraderie," she said haughtily. "Because I owe much to you and am conscious of the debt, I risked angering Bernhardt and smirching my own fair name. But you abuse my confidence. You know, as I know, that the present is no time for love-making. And yet——" She stopped abruptly, for Trafford had risen, and, picking up the bell, he put it on the table before her.
"Ring," he said.
"Can I not trust you?"
"No!" he retorted. "You gave me the right to love you, not by your promise to go through the ceremony of marriage with me, not by the fulfilment of that promise, but by a certain light that shone in your eyes for a few brief seconds in the chapel of the Neptunburg. I am exercising that right to-night."
She drew in her breath sharply.
"You said just now that I was heartless," she said.