She fell into silence again before this check to the outburst she had prepared. At the end, she said slowly:
“Is it to punish me or to cleanse your name?”
“To cleanse my name,” he said emphatically.
A ray of light appeared to her.
“You wish whatever I do in the future to be under another name but yours.”
“Precisely.”
“Very well; I am ready to marry immediately, in the forty-eight hours as you require—but not Bowden.”
He was caught unawares. He asked himself rapidly who it could be whom she had been able to dominate thus in her moment of peril, and, carried away by this curiosity, he said:
“Who is it?”