"No one must know it. The law would ... no, no! What good would it do now? He's a bad egg, but I ... I was always proud of the family name. Barbara! Remember, it wasn't Phil! It wasn't Phil!"
She fell on her knees, her hands clasping the arms of the chair, thrilling to the truth beneath that pitiful denial. Phil, not Daunt! The man she had loved had no stain of blood on his soul! She sobbed aloud. With the whir of the machinery there mixed a grating, scratching discord, as though an automaton had attempted to laugh.
"How ridiculous it seems to die like this! Only this morning I was so near ... so near to what I wanted most. It was your losing the locket that checkmated me. Why couldn't I have found it instead of Phil?... Did I tell you I was there that day, Barbara—behind the shikiri, when you followed the Japanese girl into the house? I could see just what you were thinking ... I would never have told you the truth ... never."
With a faint cry Barbara dragged herself backward. In the illusion, everything about her for the instant vanished. The yacht's walls had rolled away. She was on a gloomy hillside, and a stricken man was speaking—confessing.
Again the ghastly attempt to laugh.
"A contemptible thing, wasn't it! I knew that. I've ... I've felt it.... I never seemed contemptible to myself before. But I should have had you, and that ... would have repaid. It was all coming my ... way. Then, just the dropping of a locket, and ... Phil ... and now, it's all over!"
Barbara felt herself engulfed in a wave of complex emotions. She was torn with a great repugnance, a greater joy, and a sense of acute pity that overmastered them both. Then there rolled over all the recollection that what she now listened to was but a mechanical echo. The hillside faded, the walls of the yacht came back.
"I never believed in much, and I'm going without whining. Are you near, Barbara? Sometimes there are many people around me ... and then only you. I ... I think I'm beginning to wander!"
She was weeping now, unrestrained.
There was a long pause, in which the whir of the wheels rasped on. Then—