Alec held himself upright. He set his teeth, and his heavy jaw seemed squarer than ever. There was a great sternness in his voice.
'I tell you that whatever I did was inevitable.'
Lucy flushed at the sound of his voice, and anger and sudden hatred took the place of all other feelings.
'Then if that's true, the rest must be true. Why don't you acknowledge as well that you sacrificed my brother's life in order to save your own?'
But the mood passed quickly, and in a moment she was seized with dismay.
'Oh, it's awful. I can't realise it.' She turned to him with a desperate appeal. 'Haven't you anything to say at all? You know how much I loved my brother. You know how much it meant to me that he should live to wipe out all memory of my father's crime. All the future was centred upon him. You can't have sacrificed him callously.'
Alec hesitated for an instant.
'I think I might tell you this,' he said. 'We were entrapped by the Arabs, and our only chance of escape entailed the death of one of us.'
'So you chose my brother because you loved me.'
Alec looked at her. There was an extraordinary sadness in his eyes, but she did not see it. He answered very gravely.