“Because,” she cut in, “they accounted that you had been sufficiently provoked. Because you had not sworn to them as you swore to me that no provocation should ever drive you to raise your hand against my brother. Because they did not realize how false and how forsworn you were.”
He considered her a moment. Then he took a turn on the terrace. Lionel crouching ever by the rose-tree was almost entirely forgotten by him now.
“God give me patience with you!” he said at length. “I need it. For I desire you to understand many things this night. I mean you to see how just is my resentment; how just the punishment that is to overtake you for what you have made of my life and perhaps of my hereafter. Justice Baine and another who is dead, knew me for innocent.”
“They knew you for innocent?” There was scornful amazement in her tone. “Were they not witnesses of the quarrel betwixt you and Peter and of your oath that you would kill him?”
“That was an oath sworn in the heat of anger. Afterwards I bethought me that he was your brother.”
“Afterwards?” said she. “After you had murdered him?”
“I say again,” Oliver replied calmly, “that I did not do this thing.”
“And I say again that you lie.”
He considered her for a long moment; then he laughed. “Have you ever,” he asked, “known a man to lie without some purpose? Men lie for the sake of profit, they lie out of cowardice or malice, or else because they are vain and vulgar boasters. I know of no other causes that will drive a man to falsehood, save that—ah, yes!—” (and he flashed a sidelong glance at Lionel)—“save that sometimes a man will lie to shield another, out of self-sacrifice. There you have all the spurs that urge a man to falsehood. Can any of these be urging me to-night? Reflect! Ask yourself what purpose I could serve by lying to you now. Consider further that I have come to loathe you for your unfaith; that I desire naught so much as to punish you for that and for all its bitter consequences to me that I have brought you hither to exact payment from you to the uttermost farthing. What end then can I serve by falsehood?”
“All this being so, what end could you serve by truth?” she countered.