"That's one of your rules of the game, isn't it, to keep up the pretense? Of course I can't expect you to break rules for me." She faced him stanchly, looking denial.
"But I must tell you something," he went on quickly, "something horrible and absurd and unbelievable." She listened, and grew faint in an agony of unbelief, while he told her what had inspired Ewing's behavior the night before. She made him repeat it, testing each detail, weighing its credibility against Ewing's inexperience; dazedly trying to see herself as he must see her now. Alden Teevan regarded her with quickening sympathy.
"It wasn't a pretty thing to do, Nell, but I saw he had some deviltry afoot, and I got it from him—I half choked and half wheedled it from him. Fortunately he was drunk or I couldn't have got it either way. But now you know. It began, as nearly as I could gather, one night last spring when Ewing saw you leaving the house. The vain little fool guessed he'd seen you, and told him the tale about a woman who'd been harassing him because he was trying to break off an affair with her."
"I remember——"
"And then last night——"
"Last night—ah, last night!" She laughed weakly, recalling the scene that had met Ewing's eyes, perceiving what he must have thought. "I'd have done it for you," she heard him say again, and shuddered. She recalled, too, her own later urging, "Never let him tell you anything." How pitiful she must have seemed to him, and how monstrous! She laughed again wildly, suddenly struck by the cunning of this satire on truth. Alden Teevan recalled her from the picture.
"It was like him, wasn't it, Nell?—like both of them—like him to say it, and like the other to believe. But the harm can be undone. You can explain—a word or two."
She stared at him in sudden consternation. It had flashed upon her that no half truth would satisfy Ewing. She knew she would be unequal to any adequate fiction; she would falter and he would see to the heart of her lie. She must let him think as he did—or blacken his dearest memory. But to Alden Teevan she only said:
"Ah, yes—a word will explain—and I'm so grateful to you." She was wondering then if she were glad or sorry that he had told her. She might have lived out her time without knowing, she thought.
"Of course, if you'd like me to tell him, Nell——"