"But you are very tired?"
"Perhaps so, yet I have not thought about that. There are other things; you do not believe in me."
"Why say that?" he asked, in astonishment. "There is no question of the kind between us now."
"Truly, is there not? There has been, however; I know from the way you spoke. What was it you believed of me—that—that I was part of this conspiracy?"
"I do not know what I believed, if I actually believed anything, Miss Natalie," he explained rather lamely. "I cannot make the situation altogether clear even to myself. You see I kept meeting and talking with you—or I thought I did—and yet never found you to be the same. I was all at sea, unable to get anything straight. One moment I was convinced of your innocence; the next something occurred to make you appear guilty, a co-conspirator with Jim Hobart. Under the circumstances, you cannot condemn me justly."
"Condemn! I do not. How could I? You must have kept faith in me nevertheless, or you would never be here now. That is what seems marvellous to me—that you actually cared enough to believe."
"I realize now that I have," he said gravely. "Through it all I have kept a very large measure of faith in you."
"Why should that faith have survived?" she questioned persistently, as though doubt would not wholly leave her mind, "we had no time to really know each other; only a few hours at the most, and even then you must have deemed me a strange girl to ask of you what I did. Surely there was never a madder story told than the one I told you, and I couldn't have proven an item of it."
"Yet it has shown itself true," he interrupted.
"You actually believe then that there is another woman—a counterfeit of myself?"