He turned slowly back. “You forget that I'm not a magician,” he said, gently. “I hardly know what you are speaking of.”
For a moment she was silent, but in that moment her eyes spoke. Pain, distress, pride, all strove for expression; then at last her lips parted.
“Do you say that in seriousness?” she asked.
It was no moment for fencing, and Loder knew it. “In seriousness,” he replied, shortly.
“Then I shall speak seriously, too.” Her voice shook slightly and the color came back into her face, but the hand on the arm of the chair ceased to tremble. “For more than four years I have known that you take drugs—for more than four years I have acquiesced in your deceptions—in your meannesses—”
There was an instant's silence. Then Loder stepped forward.
“You knew—for four years?” he said, very slowly. For the first time that night he remembered Chilcote and forgot himself.
Eve lifted her head with a quick gesture—as if, in flinging off discretion and silence, she appreciated to the full the new relief of speech.
“Yes, I knew. Perhaps I should have spoken when I first surprised the secret, but it's all so past that it's useless to speculate now. It was fate, I suppose. I was very young, you were very unapproachable, and—and we had no love to make the way easy.” For a second her glance faltered and she looked away. “A woman's—a girl's—disillusioning is a very sad comedy—it should never have an audience.” She laughed a little bitterly as she looked back again. “I saw all the deceits, all the subterfuges, all the—lies.” She said the word deliberately, meeting his eyes.
Again he thought of Chilcote, but his face paled.