The girl's lip trembled. She knew now what to expect.
"No," she said.
"You are quite sure?"
"Yes, I am quite sure."
"Did I ever say I would do anything that I did not do?"
The girl had an all but irrepressible desire to cry out, to cover her face like a child. A flash of anger at her inability to maintain her self-control swept over her.
"No," she admitted. "I never knew you to break your word."
"Very well, then," still no haste, no anger,—only the relentless calm which was infinitely more terrible than either. "I will tell you why of your own choice you will go with me. It is because you value the life of Clarence Sidwell; because, as surely as I have not lied to you or to any human being in the past, there is no power on earth that can otherwise keep me away from him an hour longer."
Realization came instantaneously to Florence Baker and blotted out self-consciousness. The nervous tension vanished as fog before the sun.
"You would not do it," she said, very steadily. "You could not do it!"