"I told you once," she said quietly, "that I did not shoot you. And I am no more liar than you are, Bruce Standing."
He cursed himself for a fool; he was tired and weak and dizzy; his mind was the abode of confusions; he no longer knew what was fact and what illusion. One thing alone he did know, a marvellous thing; there was in her low voice the ring of utter honesty when she said: "I did not shoot you!" ... Liars; all her sex, waging their weak wars from ambush, holding their place in the world through seduction and deceit, all were liars. And yet she troubled him, and with that voice and those eyes she bred uncertainty on top of uncertainty in his uncertain soul. Her steady fingers were unbuttoning his collar....
"Then why," he muttered, jeering and challenging, "did you run as you did after the shot? And how, since you and I were alone in the room...."
"The window was open! Under it was the table, my pistol where I had dropped it on the table. You turned your back; I was going to jump out the window and run because for the moment I was afraid! But some one, some man, was there; I saw his hand; it caught up the pistol. It was he who shot you in the back! And when he dropped the pistol back to the table...."
Again he demanded fiercely:
"But you ran ... why? And with the gun in your hand! Why? Why, girl, if you are not lying to me?"
"Haven't I told you?" Suddenly she was aflame with passionate vehemence. "I was frightened; ready to run; keyed up to run! There came that shot, and you were hit; I thought you were killed! It flashed over me that I would be suspected and all evidence would point to me and I would be convicted of murder! Cowardly murder!... One does not think at such a time; there is only the rush of instinct and impulse. I was all ready to run; I had no time to think...."
"But you had the revolver in your hand as you went through the window!"
"Impulse and instinct, I tell you!" she cried. "Instinct to flee; and to snatch at the first weapon for protection, even though it was the weapon that had just shot you! I was a fool, maybe; and maybe by acting as I did I saved my own life!"
He was looking up into her face queerly; she saw the savage gathering of his brows; with all his might he strove for clear vision and clear thought. With a new, terrible keenness, he fixed his eyes upon her; then he said deliberately: "Liar!"