"You do not speak, Mr. Winfield," she said; "even you cannot support your friend. Still, if I have misjudged him, it is right that you should tell the truth. Did he, or did he not say these things?"
"I am sure he did not mean them," said Winfield tamely.
"Thank you; now then, go, Mr. Leicester."
Leicester started like a man who had been stung.
"You surely do not mean that," he cried. "No, no, Olive, you cannot mean that."
"The disgrace of being the subject of hundreds of gossiping tongues, as I am at this moment, is nothing to this disgrace of being the subject of a wager among drunken men. Do you think I could ever speak to you again after knowing what I know? Even now I feel contaminated by being in your presence. It is like poison to me. Your every word has been proved to be lies, your protestations worthy of the creed you profess. Go, then, and may God forgive you for the pain you have caused."
But Leicester never moved.
"If I were a man," she said, "I would throw you out of the house; and but for the fact that the servants would talk, I would ring for them at this moment, that you might be treated as such as you deserve. As it is, seeing you have not shame enough to leave such a house as this for the telling, I will leave the room myself."
Leicester lost control of himself. The man's sky had become as black as night; all he regarded as worth living for had been destroyed in an hour.
"You shall not go," he cried, "that is, you shall not go until I have explained those words which were uttered in a fit of madness."