“Call them up—let them come and look at you and hear what you are. Soon enough every one will know. Where were you this afternoon? You were watched every step of the way from here to that place where you have made yourself a base, vile, unclean creature—.”
“I am not that! Your spies have misled you.”
“Misled? Didn’t you go to that man Barfoot’s door and knock there? And because you were disappointed, didn’t you wait about, and go there a second time?”
“What if I did? It doesn’t mean what you think.”
“What? You go time after time to the private chambers of an unmarried man—a man such as that—and it means no harm?”
“I have never been there before.”
“You expect me to believe you?” Widdowson cried with savage contumely. He had just loosed his hold of her, and she was upright again before him, her eyes flashing defiance, though every muscle in her frame quivered. “When did your lies begin? Was it when you told me you had been to hear Miss Barfoot’s lecture, and never went there at all?”
He aimed the charge at a venture, and her face told him that his suspicion had been grounded.
“For how many weeks, for how many months, have you been dishonouring me and yourself?”
“I am not guilty of what you believe, but I shan’t try to defend myself. Thank Heaven, this is the end of everything between us! Charge me with what you like. I am going away from you, and I hope we may never meet again.”