Nancy passed him his cup and set the toast within his reach. Then she pulled up a chair for herself and sat down before the tea tray.
"Yes," she went on, "that's why I brought my cup. I must get away." She smiled a little wistfully. "My imprisonment is over. Mr. Sternford set me free long ago, but—well, anyway I'm going now, and that's why I wanted to talk to you."
She seemed to find the whole thing an effort. But as the man's dark eyes remained regarding her, and no word of his came to help her, she was forced to go on.
"You know my story," she said. "You've heard it all from Mr. Sternford. I know that. You told me so, didn't you?"
The man inclined his dark head.
"Yes," he said. "I know your story—all of it."
"Yes." The girl's tea remained untouched. Suddenly she raised one delicate hand and passed her finger tips across her forehead. It was a gesture of uncertainty. Then, quite suddenly, it fell back into her lap, and, in a moment, her hands were tightly clasped. "Oh, I best tell you at once. Never, never, never as long as I live can I go back to the Skandinavia. All the years I've been with them I've just been lost in a sort of dream world of ambition. I haven't seen a thing outside it. I've just been a blind, selfish woman who believed in everybody, and most of all in herself and her selfish aims. Can you understand? Will you? Oh, now I know all it meant. Now I know the crime of it. And the horror of the thing I've done, and been, has well-nigh broken my heart. Oh, I'm not really bad, indeed I'm not. I didn't know. I didn't understand. I can never forgive myself. Never, never! And when I think of the blood that has been shed as the result of my work—"
"No." The man's voice broke in sharply. "Put that right out of your mind, child. None of the blood shed is your doing. None of it lies at your door. It lies at the door of others. It lies at the door of two men only. The man who first set up this great mill at Sachigo, and the man whose hate of him desired its destruction. The rest, you, those others, Bull Sternford and Harker, here, are simply the pawns in the battle which owes its inception to those things that happened years ago. I tell you solemnly, child, no living soul but those two, and chiefly the first of the two, are to blame for the things that have happened to-day. Set your mind easy. No one blames you. No one ever will blame you. Not even the great God to whom we all have to answer. I know the whole story of it. It is my life to know the story of these forests. Set your mind at rest."
"Oh, I wish I could think so. I wish I could believe. I feel, I feel you are telling me this to comfort me. But you wouldn't just do that?"
The man shook his head.