"We can talk better here," I explained. "The engine makes so much noise."
"Yes; and—and somehow I—I feel more like trusting you when I am able to see your face," she admitted frankly. "I am actually afraid to be alone."
"I have felt that this was true from the first. Indeed, I seriously wonder at the trust you have reposed in me—a total stranger."
"But—but how could I help it? Have I been unwomanly? I think I scarcely know what I have done. I could very easily have told what was right in the old days; but—but surely you understand—this was not to be decided by those rules. I was no longer free. Do you mean that you blame me for what has been done?"
"Far from it. You have acted in the only way possible. To me you are a wonderfully brave woman. I doubt if one in a thousand could have faced the situation as well."
"Oh I can hardly feel I have been that. It seems to me I have shown myself strangely weak—permitting you to do exactly as you pleased with me. Yet you do not understand; it has not been wholly my own peril which caused me to surrender so easily."
"But I think I do understand—it was partly a sacrifice for others."
"In a way, yes, it was; but I cannot explain more fully, even to you, now. Yet suppose I make this sacrifice, and it fails; suppose after all they should fall into the hands of these men?"
"I will not believe that," I protested, stoutly. "I feel convinced they had warning—there is no other way in which to account for their disappearance, their failure to return to the house. They must have encountered Pete and gone away with him."
"If I only knew that."