"You shall not say that. You shall not. Miss Carstairs, you know I could have kept you on the yacht if I had wanted to. You know how I gave the order to put about and bring you back to Hunston. Did I look in the least then like a man whose hopes and plans had been ruined? You know I did not. You know I said to you that I—I was the happiest man in America. Will you tell me what on earth that could mean—except that I had decided to give up a thing that has been a millstone around my neck ever since—I met you?"
She made no reply, did not look at him. The dusk shadowed her eyes; and whether her silence meant good or ill he could not tell.
"You cannot answer, you see. We both know why. You will not be fair to me, Miss Carstairs. It is that night in the Academy box-office over again. Because I had to deceive you once—not for my own sake—you will not look at the plain facts. But in your heart—just like that other night—I know you believe me."
Of course she could not let that pass now. "I do not!" she said. "I do not. I must ask you, please, not to keep me here any longer."
Varney's face went a shade paler. Arguing about his own veracity was even less bearable than he had thought; his manner all at once became singularly quiet.
"The merest moment, if you will. I can prove what I say," he answered slowly, "but of course I won't do that. You must believe what I say, believe me. Nothing else matters but that…. Don't you know that it took a very strong reason to make me break faith with my old friend, your father—to make me stand here begging to be believed, like this? You have only to look at me, I think. Don't you know that I couldn't possibly deceive you now … after what has happened to me?"
"I don't know what you mean. I don't understand. Don't tell me. Nothing has happened …"
"Everything has happened," he said still more quietly. "I've fallen crazily in love with you."
She did not lift her eyes; neither moved nor spoke; gave no sign that she had heard. He went on slowly:
"This—might be hard to believe, except that it must be so easy to see. I've known you less than three days, and I never wanted to—even like you. My one idea was to think of you as my enemy. That was what Maginnis and I agreed—plotting together like a pair of nihilists. It all seems so preposterous now. Everything was against me from the beginning. I wouldn't face it till to-day, this afternoon. Then it all came over me in a rush, and, of course, your happiness became a great deal more to me than your father's. So we turned around, and it was then that I told you how happy I was. Didn't you know then what I meant? Of course it was because I had just found out … how you were the one person in the world who mattered to me."