She nodded, unable to repeat the words.
"I was at the door of Basterga's room last night."
"Last night!"
"Yes. I had the key of his room in my hand. I was putting it into the lock when I heard——"
"Hush!" She stepped forward, she would have put her hand over his mouth. "Hush! Hush!"
The terror of her eyes, the glance she cast behind her, echoed the word more clearly than her lips. "Hush! Hush!"
He could not bear to look at her. Her voice, her terror, the very defence she had striven to make confirmed him in his worst suspicions. The thing was too certain, too apparent; in mercy to himself as well as to her, he averted his eyes.
They fell on the hills on which he had gazed that morning barely a fortnight earlier, when the autumn haze had mirrored her face; and all his thoughts, his heart, his fancy had been hers, her prize, her easy capture. And now he dared not look on her face. He could not bear to see it distorted by the terrors of an evil conscience. Even her words when she spoke again jarred on him.
"You knew the voice?" she whispered.
"I did not know it," he answered brokenly. "I knew—whose it was."