“We met last week for the first time. It was on the day the bridge broke.”
“Do you think it just to me that you have kept the affair secret?”
“Not until this hour have we spoken of our love.”
“But all the time you were plotting my disgrace,” he argued, eyeing her shrewdly.
“There was no plot,” she averred, rising, impatiently. “If you cannot be fair discussion is useless.”
“Be fair!” he flung out, drawing nearer to her. “Let me ask if you think it fair to discard me at this hour—to degrade me before the world?”
Without hesitation she answered: “I was on the point of doing you a great injury. My love for Mario Forza has saved me.”
“Saved you from the crime of marrying me?” he suggested, querulously.
“Say, rather, the crime of marriage with a man I do not love,” she corrected.
“As you will; but I cannot see how it has saved you,” he told her, coolly.