"I don't know," he said. "In all my life I never felt but one moment of power, and that, it seems, was false. For years I have longed to show myself a man, and now—what have I done? What have I done? I am no monster." He moaned and sank limply into a chair, folding together in an attitude of dejection that was pitiful. He raised his head and broke out at her in a last spasm of desperation, as a dying ember flares even while it crumbles. "My God! why couldn't you be consistent? Why did you go half-way? Why couldn't you be all good or all bad and save me this?"
"All women are half good and half bad."
"I can't blame you for not loving me, I suppose," he mumbled. "No woman of your kind could love a man like me."
"Those men!" she said, in a way that made him writhe.
"Wait until I—think. I must think."
"You can't think now, and neither can I."
"We must." He wrung his hands. "They'll never believe me—" There was a long silence.
"Perhaps in the morning we can see a way out."
"That's it." He nodded. "You go to bed and I'll think. I'm trying to think now, but this heat is suffocating me and my head is tired." He brushed a hand feebly across his brow. "If it would only rain I—could think better."
"Yes, and we must think of Anthony, too. No matter how you blame me, you must realize that he was innocent, and perhaps, after all, he is the one that you wronged deepest. He will have to meet those men, and they were his friends."