"Appall me? No. 'Tis not a pleasant one, I admit. But what would you? I played a game with Fate, the dice went against me, and I have lost. That, however, is no reason why I should bewail myself like a puling child, or why my cheek should blanch at the prospect which I shall presently be called upon to confront."
"But will you not see, cannot you comprehend, that a door of escape is open for you?" Her voice had in it a ring of almost passionate impatience. The precious minutes were drifting away one by one.
"Possibly so, but only at an expense which I do not choose to incur."
"Oh, what headstrong folly! Did the world ever see its like? And you would rather face your--your doom than accept this sacrifice, as you choose to call it, at my hands?"
"Even so. I have said it, and nothing will avail to move me from it."
For a moment or two she beat her hands together in an agony of helplessness. Then she stood up. Her face was colorless, and her forehead contracted as if with a spasm of intense pain.
"You do not know how cruel you are," she said in low, concentrated tones. "You drag from me things which I thought never to reveal to a living soul." She paused for a space of half-a-dozen heart-beats, as though fighting against some hidden emotion. Then she went on. "Should it be your fate to die, Geoffrey Dare, the same day that ends your life shall end mine! I swear it." She lifted up her hands and let her face sink into them.
An inarticulate cry broke from Dare, a great light leapt into his eyes, he drew a step nearer and held out both his arms. Then he half drew back, with his arms extended in mid-air. "Such words, unless I am a bad interpreter, can have but one meaning." He seemed to breathe the syllables rather than to speak them.
For a few seconds there was no reply, and when it did come he had to strain his ears or he would have lost it.
"Your death-day shall be mine. I have said it. Is not that enough?"