“You wouldn't—you couldn't do such a thing!” he exclaimed in low, appalled tones of unbelief.
“I could!” she asserted, though her face whitened and her eyes flinched beneath his contemptuous gaze.
“But it would be a vile thing to do,” he pursued, still with that accent of incredulous abhorrence. “Doubly vile for you to do this thing.”
“Do you think I don't know that—don't realize it?” she answered desperately. “You can say nothing that could make me think it worse than I do already. It would be the basest action of which any woman could be guilty. I recognize that. And yet”—she thrust her face, pinched and strained-looking, into his—“and yet I shall do it. I'd take that sin—or any other—on my conscience for the sake of Tim.”
Trent turned away from her with a gesture of defeat, and for a moment or two he paced silently backwards and forwards, while she watched him with burning eyes.
“Do you realize what it means?” she went on urgently. “You have no way out. You can't deny the truth of what I have to tell.”
“No,” he acknowledged harshly. “As you say, I cannot deny it. No one knows that better than yourself.”
Suddenly he turned to her, and his face was that of a man in uttermost anguish of soul. Beads of moisture rimmed his drawn mouth, and when he spoke his voice was husky and uneven.
“Haven't I suffered enough—paid enough?” he burst out passionately. “You've had your pound of flesh. For God's sake, be satisfied with that! Leave—Garth Trent—to build up what is left of his life in peace!”
The roughened, tortured tones seemed to unnerve her. For a moment she hid her face in her hands, shuddering, and when she raised it again the tears were running down her cheeks.