"I tell you, you were tricked," he pursued, with a glib rapidity that she did not know whether to attribute to innocence or guilt. "I may have lost a case for some friend of this girl. I may have won a suit against one of her hangers-on. There are men in the lower sort of politics, I'm ashamed to say, that don't hesitate to use such tools, and I have offended a good many of them. Before you considered this story true, don't you feel that you should have thought of one of these explanations?"
"I don't know," Marian faltered. The relentless tide of her emotions now set in again in his favor. Mary had told her story so calmly, with so little feeling concerning her own sufferings, that Marian kept wondering if it might not have been an invention. She was sure that, all along, somewhere in her heart, she had wanted to think the best of him; wanted, despite her accusing jealousy, to acquit him. "I don't know," she repeated despairingly; "but"—and the tide began to flow once more—"unless I can be certain of her motive for lying to me, don't you see, Wesley, don't you see that I must have proof of your innocence from you?"
She looked at him in wide appeal. The undertow had caught her, and she was crying for help from shore. She knew now that she loved him, and she had learned the ultimate tragedy of love: that love and mistrust may be one.
"How can I know anything?" she went on. "How can I be sure of anything? How can I understand such a world as this? It seems as if all the earth was lying to me, and as if all the earth could lie and still look honest. I trusted the girl; I trusted you. I beg of you to prove to me that I was right only when I trusted you. Wesley,"—she almost extended her arms to him—"tell me that you didn't do it!"
Dyker saw his advantage, but decided that the way to keep it was to be firm. He spoke quickly, yet coldly.
"Who was this woman?" he asked.
"Do you think I ought to tell you?" she pleaded.
"Ought to tell me? Why, Marian, how else am I to prove what you ask me to prove? If you are to be at all fair with me, how can you start by hiding the false witnesses against me?"
He was right, she felt.
"Did you ever hear," she asked, "of Mary Morton?"