"But she wanted you to, of course."
"Yes, sir."
"Had you any notion that she could force you so to do at that time—marry her against your will, I mean?"
"No, sir, I didn't. Not if I could help it. My plan was to wait as long as I could and save all the money I could and then when the time came just refuse and give her all the money that I had and help her all I could from then on."
"But you know," proceeded Jephson, most suavely and diplomatically at this point, "there are various references in these letters here which Miss Alden wrote you"—and he reached over and from the district attorney's table picked up the original letters of Roberta and weighed them solemnly in his hand—"to a plan which you two had in connection with this trip—or at least that she seemed to think you had. Now, exactly what was that plan? She distinctly refers to it, if I recall aright, as 'our plan.'"
"I know that," replied Clyde—since for two months now he, along with Belknap and Jephson, had discussed this particular question. "But the only plan I know of"—and here he did his best to look frank and be convincing—"was the one that I offered over and over."
"And what was that?"
"Why, that she go away and take a room somewhere and let me help her and come over and see her once in a while."
"Well, no, you're wrong there," returned Jephson, slyly. "That isn't and couldn't be the plan she had in mind. She says in one of these letters that she knows it will be hard on you to have to go away and stay so long, or until she is out of this thing, but that it can't be helped."
"Yes, I know," replied Clyde, quickly and exactly as he had been told to do, "but that was her plan, not mine. She kept saying to me most of the time that that was what she wanted me to do, and that I would have to do it. She told me that over the telephone several times, and I may have said all right, all right, not meaning that I agreed with her entirely but that I wanted to talk with her about it some more later."