Violet felt the sands slipping beneath her feet. She laced her fingers together till the knuckles bruised her flesh.
"Don't do that," she pleaded; "don't take it that way; it's true, what I told you, every word of it. I only want you to keep your promise to me."
She stopped with a sob, and waited.
Wesley reached calmly for a glass of wine, drank it, put down the glass, thrust his hands deep into his trousers' pockets, and, stretching out his long legs, regarded, humming, the toes of his shining pumps.
"I don't believe you," he said at last.
"But, Mr. Dyker——"
"It's too thin."
"Even if it was a lie," Violet despairingly persisted, "you ought to help me. Do you know who I am?"
"That's the point."
"Do you know how I was brought here?"