He hesitated. She had clasped his arm. Her weight on it was heavy; her face had grown deadly pale. He looked at her closely; looked down at her torn sleeve.
“Is—is it anything that he did?” he demanded harshly.
She put out one hand blindly, reaching for the cab door; wrenched it open; sagged heavily on his arm. He almost lifted her into the vehicle; and she crumpled up in the corner, her eyes closing.
Annan spoke to the driver, cast a quick, grim look at the gate, then turned and jumped into the cab.
“Now,” he said, drawing her head to his shoulder, “we won’t talk until we get home. If you feel faint we can stop at a chemist’s. Lie quietly, dear.”
She lay against his shoulder, perfectly inert—so still that, at moments, he leaned over to see her face, fearing she had fainted.
Neither uttered a word. His thoughts had made glimmering slits of his eyes and had set the hard muscles working around his jaws.
But all the girl thought of was to get him away from that heavy black pistol and from the man whose neck had swollen red behind the ears.
For suddenly in that moment when she had seen that terrifying expression on Annan’s face, a new and vital truth had flashed clear as crystal in her brain. She saw it; saw through it; knew it for Truth.
With her, Truth was always final. It settled everything for her in whom no tiniest seed of self-deception ever had germinated.