She lowered her eyes and drew back a little, but he followed her, and, standing before her, looked down into her face with a persistent, searching gaze. "You must understand me now," he said firmly, "when I believed that you loved Frank Lamotte, I said 'Then I will not stand forth and accuse the man she loves, for—I love her, and she must not be unhappy.'"
A great sob rose in her throat. A wave of crimson swept over her brow. She stood before him with clasped hands and drooping head.
"But for that meddlesome slip of paper," he went on, "I should not have been driven from the field, and this treachery of Lamotte's could never have been practiced upon me. Do you remember a certain day when you sent for Ray Vandyck, and he came to you from my office? Well, on that day Francis Lamotte told me that you were his promised wife, and when Ray came back, he verified the statement, having received the information from your lips. Once I hoped to come to you and say, after lifting for your eyes the veil of mystery, which I have allowed to envelope my past: 'Constance Wardour, I love you; I want you for my very own, my wife!' Now, mountains have arisen between us; I can not offer you a hand with the shadow of a stain upon it; nor a name that is tarnished by doubt and suspicion. However this affair may end for me, that hope is ended now."
"That hope is ended now."
It had come; the decisive moment.
She could go away now with sealed lips, and it would end indeed. She could turn away from him, leaving happiness behind her; taking with her his happiness, too; or, she could speak, and then—