Then more confidently he exclaimed, “Jean? You do understand—you do agree that it would be a shame to bring some one who has nothing to do with the matter at all into such a case as mine will be?”
“Of course I agree to that,” she whispered. “And yet, Harry, and yet——?”
She looked at him so imploringly that for the first time he leaned forward, in his eagerness, across the table which separated them, and there came a warning cough from the distant half-open door.
He straightened himself quickly, and over his face she saw flash a painful look of impotent anger.
She said desperately, “You really feel you ought not to tell who was with you that night in the wood—not even to me?”
“Not even to you! I’m not a quixotic fool, my darling. If I thought it would make the slightest difference, of course I would obtain permission from the person in question to reveal her identity. But it would make no difference. It would simply”—he stopped, then choosing his words carefully, he concluded—“draw a hateful, vulgar red herring across the path. I’m afraid that is the object of the people who want me to give you the name of this lady who was with me in the wood.”
As she made no answer to that, he looked at her searchingly.
“I have a right to ask you to believe that I did nothing of which I am now ashamed.”
And then there fell on them a long, long silence. Jean felt overcome, dazed with miserable suspicions. It was as if this man whom she still loved with so absorbing a passion had suddenly revealed himself as being quite other than what she had thought him.
Again there came the sound of a little cough, followed by the rustling of a newspaper being slowly folded up.