The girl turned to him, with a little, piteous gesture.
"Have I asked you for an explanation?" she said. "Do I need one—since I know? You say you'd have asked me long ago. Well, then, I ask you—why didn't you? Why didn't you ask me before it was too late? Why didn't you ask me while yet you had something to offer me which I could have accepted gratefully—your innocence, your purity, the best of all that was in you, and to which I had a right, do you hear?—a right! Why didn't you speak then, before you'd thrown all these away, sold your birthright, and become like all the rest? Do you come to me now—now, with another woman's kisses on your lips, and God only knows what of the impurity she has taught you in your heart? Do you come to me like that, and expect me to welcome you, to accept the fact that I am your second choice after a woman whose name you would not mention to me—"
"Margery—Margery!"
"Do you deny it? Do you deny that you were with her—when?—yesterday? Oh, be true at least to one thing, whatever it be—if not to the faith you owed me, if all you've been telling me is true, then to the woman you've preferred before me—to your mistress, to your mistress, Andrew Vane!"
Andrew fell back a step, putting up his hands as if to ward off a blow.
"It was for this," he faltered, "that you told me to come here—to ask you anything I chose?"
"You know better than that!" said Margery firmly.
"Then Mrs. Carnby has been telling you—"
"Mrs. Carnby has told me nothing except what I knew—or, rather, tried not to know—before. It isn't from her I learned. The truth has come to me bit by bit, and I've fought against it as it came, trying to believe in you to the very last."
"And you think—"