“That is the truth, Jilian.”
“And do you not think it a pity, sir, that you did not discover this—some months ago?”
Jeffray, hanging his head and looking very miserable, walked to the window and stood staring out of it in silence. The landscape stretched gray and meaningless before his eyes, so hustled was he by his own thoughts. Jilian was watching him with a rapacious air, her painted face looking old and almost shrewish. Truth, like the shield in the fable, bore a different blazoning to these two who studied it from opposing situations.
Presently Jeffray turned from the window, walked back into the middle of the room, with the look of a man determined to speak the last word.
“It is not easy,” he began, “to confess that one has been mistaken.”
“Not easy, Richard, eh?”
“My sense of honor—”
“Your sense of honor, Richard, compels you to make excuses.”
Jeffray colored at the taunt.
“Jilian, I have not come to make excuses.”