“But you love me—you do love me, I know!” The young man spoke with joyous certainty, for some inflection of her voice had told the truth to his heart. Nothing else mattered. “But now, to come back to this hole we're in here. Don't you understand, at last, that you can't beat the law? If you're caught here to-night, where would you get off—caught here with a gang of burglars? Tell me, dear, why did you do it? Why didn't you protect yourself? Why didn't you go to Chicago as you planned?”
“What?” There was a new quality in Mary's voice. A sudden throb of shock masked in the surface indifference of intonation.
Dick repeated his question, unobservant of its first effect.
“Why didn't you go to Chicago as you had planned?”
“Planned? With whom?” The interrogation came with an abrupt force that cried of new suspicions.
“Why, with Burke.” The young man tried to be patient over her density in this time of crisis.
“Who told you that I had arranged any such thing?” Mary asked. Now the tenseness in her manner got the husband's attention, and he replied with a sudden gravity, apprehensive of he knew not what.
“Burke himself did.”
“When?” Mary was standing rigid now, and the rare color flamed in her cheeks. Her eyes were blazing.
“Less than an hour ago.” He had caught the contagion of her mood and vague alarm swept him.