The silence continued for several moments, each gazing at the other. He had put one hand upon his desk and was leaning heavily upon it. He looked like a man sick unto death. But soon a shiver ran through him; he swallowed, gripped himself in a strong control, and smiled again his strained, unnatural smile.
“Katherine, Katherine,” he tried to say it reprovingly and indulgently, but there was a quaver in his voice. “You have gone quite out of your head!”
“It is true!” she cried. “All unintentionally I have followed one of the oldest of police expedients. I have suddenly confronted the criminal with his crime, and I have surprised his guilt upon his face!”
“What you say is absurd. I can explain it only on the theory that you are quite out of your mind.”
“Never before was I so much in it!”
In this moment when she felt that the hidden enemy she had striven so long to find was at last revealed to her, she felt more of anguish than of triumph.
“Oh, how could you do such a thing, Mr. Blake?” she burst out. “How could you do it?”
He shook his head, and tried to smile at her perversity—but the smile was a wan failure.
“I see—I see!” she cried in her pain. “It is just the old story. A good man rises to power through being the champion of the people—and, once in power, the opportunities, the temptation, are too much for him. But I never—no, never!—thought that such a thing would happen with you!”
He strove for the injured air of the misjudged old friend.