"No; I've kept on lying—without scruple, without shame."
"Then why do you haul me up?"
"Because it has seemed to me we might, like true companions, work it out a little together."
This was not strong, he felt, as, pausing with his hands in his pockets, he stood before her; and he knew it as weaker still after she had looked at him a minute. "Morris Gedge, I propose to be your true companion, and I've come here to stay. That's all I've got to say." It was not, however, for "You had better try yourself and see," she presently added. "Give the place, give the story away, by so much as a look, and—well, I'd allow you about nine days. Then you'd see."
He feigned, to gain time, an innocence. "They'd take it so ill?" And then as she said nothing: "They'd turn and rend me? They'd tear me to pieces?"
But she wouldn't make a joke of it. "They wouldn't have it, simply."
"No—They wouldn't. That's what I say. They won't."
"You had better," she went on, "begin with Grant-Jackson. But even that isn't necessary. It would get to him, it would get to the Body, like wildfire."
"I see," said poor Gedge. And indeed for the moment he did see, while his companion followed up what she believed her advantage.
"Do you consider it's all a fraud?"