"I suppose you don't care a damn for me—that way!" he said, with a mirthless laugh.
"What!" she whispered, bewildered by his violence. Then: "Do you mean that you are in love with me!"
"Utterly, hopelessly—" his voice broke and he stood with hands clenched, unable to utter a word.
She sat up very straight and pale, the firelight gleaming on her neck and shoulders. After a moment his voice came back to his choked throat:
"I love you better than anything in the world." he said in unsteady tones. "And that is what has come between us. Do you think it is something we had better hunt down and destroy—this love that has come between us?"
"Is—is that true?" she asked in the awed voice of a child.
"It seems to be," he managed to say. She slid stiffly to the floor and stood leaning against the sofa's edge, looking at him wide-eyed as a schoolgirl.
"It never occurred to you what the real trouble might be," he asked, "did it?"
She shook her head mechanically.
"Well, we know now. Your court of inquiry has brought out the truth after all."