"Let us go where we can speak without interruption. The woods down there?"
They moved down one of the forest aisles. The earth was carpeted with dead leaves from beneath which rose the wild flowers. The oak was putting forth tufts of rose velvet, the beech a veil of pale and satiny green. The sky above was blue, but, the sun being low, the space beneath the lacing boughs was shadowy enough. The two men stopped beside the bole of a giant beech, silver-grey, splashed with lichens. "Quiet enough here," said Stafford. "Well, what is it, Richard Cleave?"
"I have not much to say," said Cleave. "I will not keep you many moments. I will ask you to recall to mind the evening of the seventeenth of last April."
"Well, I have done so. It is not difficult."
"No. It would, I imagine, come readily. Upon that evening, Maury Stafford, you lied to me."
"I—"
"Don't!" said Cleave. "Why should you make it worse? The impression which, that evening, you deliberately gave me, you on every after occasion as deliberately strengthened. Your action, then and since, brands you, sir, for what you are!"
"And where," demanded Stafford hoarsely, "where did you get this precious information—or misinformation? Who was at the pains to persuade you—no hard matter, I warrant!—that I was dealing falsely? Your informant, sir, was mistaken, and I—"
A shaft of sunshine, striking between the boughs, flooded the space in which they stood. It lit Cleave's head and face as by a candle closely held. The other uttered a sound, a hard and painful gasp. "You have seen her!"
"Yes."