"You never even suspected that such a plot was in the hatching?" insisted Richard Maule. "I want a true answer, mind!"
Dick Wantele got up from his chair. He put his hand on the back of it and stared down into his cousin's face.
"Once, many years ago, Athena spoke to me as if such a thing would be possible," he said.
He never lied, he never had lied—in words—to Richard Maule, and he was not going to begin now.
"You mean in Italy, when I was ill?"
Wantele nodded his head, and then he felt gripped—in the throes of a horrible fear. It was as if a pit had suddenly opened between his cousin and himself, between the man whom he loved,—whose affection and respect he wished above all things to retain, for they were all that remained to him,—and his miserable self. He wondered whether the secret thing he feared showed itself in his face.
Richard Maule slowly got up. Wantele made an instinctive movement to help him, but the other waved him off, not unkindly, but a little impatiently.
"Dick?" he said. "My boy, I want to ask you a question—an indiscreet question. You need not answer it, but if you answer it, please answer it truly."
Wantele opened his mouth and then closed it again. He could not think of the words with which to entreat the other man to desist——
Richard Maule, looking at him, knew the answer to his question before he had uttered it, but even so he spoke, obsessed by the cruel wish to know.