He laughed, a short, jarring laugh. He felt an insane desire to seize that slender, unyielding body in his great arms, to rain kisses on that vivid, scornful mouth with its short upper lip, and bend or break her like a sapling to his savage will. "Suppose I did," he said stonily. "What then?"
"That was a contemptible act!" The young voice cut like a whip-lash and involuntarily Craig's big fists clenched. "And if I were Mr. Sevier, I would horsewhip you!"
A sound from behind them fell across the surcharged quiet. Both turned astonished faces—Echo's quivering with feeling, Craig's set and stormy—upon the man whose name had just been spoken. Neither had heard his step as he came quickly along the grassy path, nor had Sevier guessed the situation till those pregnant sentences sent the blood from his heart. He had thought the secret of his failure unsuspected. The realisation now that one, at least, had guessed the truth had been instantly swallowed up in the bitter knowledge that it had fallen to her—the one woman in the world—to defend him, who was undeserving!
Craig regarded him with a veiled smile that was half a sneer. The apparition had come at a fateful moment. Then his glance passed to Echo. "May I ask," he said, "whether you have yet cross-examined Mr. Sevier?"
He bowed and went quickly up the path toward the lighted piazzas.
There ensued a silence in which two minds travelled far. Echo had sat down upon the bench, her face averted. Her anger had faded out and her heart was hammering at the thought that Harry had heard, in her defence of him, what was in truth a confession. Across the aching interval broke the wanton bubble of a whip-poor-will.
"Echo—" he said in a muffled voice.
She looked up at him in the feathery light. "You heard—I wish you hadn't. Yet I couldn't help it! That ridiculous slur! But you can't possibly imagine that—that any one who knows you—"
He stopped her with an abrupt gesture. "Wait. I want to—I must tell you something."
"No, no!" she protested. "You shall not! I need no assurance. Do you think that I—"