“You found—Cara—on board Brett’s yacht.”
“I did—and drew my own conclusions.”
“Well, they were wrong ones,” said Ann. Then, seeing that he looked quite unconvinced, she went on quickly lest her courage should fail her. “If it had not been for Cara, you would have found me there—”
“You? Then it’s true—true you actually intended going there? Bradley was right?”
“Yes, he told you just what he had been ordered to tell you. Brett believed I was coming—he was expecting me. I promised to go because he held some bills of Tony’s—Tony had borrowed from him far more than he could pay. And Brett bargained with me that he would give them up if I would go to supper with him on the Sphinx.” The whole story came tumbling out in quick, vivid sentences. In a few moments Eliot was in possession of all the facts which lay behind his discovery of Cara on the yacht.
“So Cara had taken your place.” There was a strange new gentleness in his voice as he spoke of the woman who had first broken and then built up his life again.
“Yes. I was afraid—afraid that if you knew I had been there, you would believe—what you believed once before.”
A stifled ejaculation broke from him.
“You thought that?” he said, his voice suddenly roughened by pain. “Oh, my dear, do you think I haven’t learned my lesson—yet?”
She looked at him doubtfully.