"No," he said. "It is not. But it is the truth. I can prove it. I guessed it some time back, but I wasn't certain. Your—our father, lived in my bungalow. It was there he was murdered—he and my mother by her husband. How much you know——"
"I didn't know that," Tristram put in quietly. He looked away from Barclay, and the latter, watching him with a fevered anxiety, saw that the fine hand lying on Arabella's neck had lost its absolute steadiness. "You must prove it."
"I can do so."
"If it's true—then I'm sorry—sorry I spoke as I did. You've had the beastliest luck—I beg your pardon."
He lifted his head again. The white gravity of his face lent the rather boyish words a sincerity which Barclay recognized with an inward faltering of his anger. For a vivid instant the two men touched spiritually, or met on some common ground of emotion—then broke apart.
"I don't want pity," Barclay exclaimed childishly, bitterly.
"I didn't offer you pity. Or if I did—I meant it for us both. It's not as bad—but I was rather proud of my father. My mother—we'll leave that out. And, anyhow—I suppose it's a small thing compared to what he did to you. It was a pitiless thing to do." He hesitated, and then added, with a shyness which sat quaintly enough on his big manhood: "I suppose we're brothers, then?"
Barclay drew back from the outstretched hand. A mad impulse had almost driven him to grasp it and kiss it, but he crushed it under, shivering from head to foot in the violence of the revulsion.
"So you acknowledge the relationship?"
"Why shouldn't I?"