She has risen to her feet again, risen to her full height (how tall she is!); and once again stands confronting him, not even asking the table-edge for any support.
'And—you—told—me—that—you—were—free!'
The words drop wonderingly from her mouth, barbed with an icy contempt that makes him writhe. But at least he thanks God that she does not treat him to such mirth as Betty's.
'I told you the truth,' rejoins the poor fellow doggedly—'I was free; I am free!'
But the consciousness of the impossibility of really clearing his character, save at the expense of her whom he must for ever shield, lends a flatness and unreality to his assertion, which, as he feels through every aching fibre, will only serve the more deeply to convince Peggy of his guilt. It is not long before he sees that he has divined justly.
'You need not make a laughing-stock of me,' she says with dignity, turning towards the door. But at that, the despair which has been paralysing him awakes, and cries out loud, giving him motion and a voice.
'You are not going!' he cries in a tone whose agony stabs her like a knife, flinging himself upon her passage.
'What is there to stay for?' she answers, choked. But she pauses. Can he, even yet, have anything to say?
'Do you think that I met her there on purpose?' he asks, his words pouring out in a hoarse eager flood, as if he had but little hope of commanding her attention for long to them—'by appointment? Ask yourself whether it is possible? Was I so anxious to leave you? Was not it you that drove me away? I tell you I had no more idea of meeting her than I had of meeting——' he hesitates, seeking for a comparison strong enough to emphasise his denial—'as I had of meeting one of the dead. I did not even know that she was in the neighbourhood. I had held no communication with her for months. It was an accident—a mere accident!'
He breaks off suffocated. At the intense sincerity of his tone, a sincerity which it is difficult to believe feigned, a sort of stir has come over her face; but in a moment it has gone again.