“To-morrow?”
“So she says; and perhaps on the whole it is best, don’t you think?”
Violet shrugged hopeless shoulders. “I don’t care one bit either way,” she said.
“So, then, that is agreed between us. You won’t ever write to him again.”
“I don’t undertake anything of that kind,” she retorted. “I must have time to think. Are you quite sure that all this infamy is the God’s truth? It is as if you said that mountain streams ran ink. The man told me that there were certificates. They fell out of a picture-frame, he said. He looked true, he seemed good and honest; he is a young man with dark-blue eyes—”
“He is a beast!”
“I don’t know that yet, I have no certain proof. I was to see him this evening.”
“To see him? Ah, but never again, never again! And would you now, after hearing—”
“I am not sure. I must have time to think, I must have proof. I have no proof. It is hard on me, after all.”
“What is hard on you?” demanded Van Hupfeldt; and, had not the girl been so distraught, she would have seen that he had the semblance more of a murderer than of a lover. “What proofs do you want beyond my word? The man said that there were certificates, did he not? Well, let him produce them. The fact that he can’t is a proof that there were none.”