"No, not quite that!" she cried, in almost piteous appeal, "but I was afraid, from the way he talked—Oh, Charlie, you can't understand! It is true that I did not have to take his money to-day, but I am still at his mercy."
"Still at his mercy!" Charles groaned, his eyes ablaze with blended lights of fury and despair.
Falteringly she explained Frazier's veiled threats. As she ended she put her hands on his shoulders and again she lifted her face to his. Again he was swept by the flames of desire; again he held himself in check; again the shackles of his hopeless condition bit into the flesh of his memory, sinking to the very bones of his consciousness. What could he do? He might tell her of the blight on his life which had isolated him from all others, but what good would that do? And had he not promised William that the truth should never be known? No, his fate was sealed. He had won her, but he must lose her. No honorable man could ask such a woman to share such a precarious fate. She would be less unfortunate even as the wife of a man like Frazier. Charles was a social outcast who had crept into the shelter of unsuspecting hospitality. One loophole, and one only, flashed before his eyes on the screen of temptation, and that was to go back to Boston and demand his moral rights. But that would mean that he was failing to make good those sacred obligations. That would mean the degradation of William, and the terrible blight upon his family whom till now he had saved from humiliation and pain. No, that course would rouse condemnation even in the heart of the girl before him. Was there anything she would not do or suffer to save her brothers? Could such a selfless creature approve of a man less selfless? Her wondrous face, the all but visible halo about it, was his answer.
"What is the matter, Charlie?" she asked. "Have you lost respect for me for allowing him to kiss me? I could have died when he did it—I hated myself so, for I was thinking of what you would think if you knew. But I was afraid—afraid of him. If he were to become angry and turn against me, he would give my brothers up at once. He would lead in the search for them, and if he knew or suspected—"
"Suspected what?" he interrupted, as she paused and stood shuddering, her eyes filling with shadows.
"If he suspected that I—if he suspected how I feel to you—he would try to kill you. Already he is your enemy, already he suspects you of—"
"Suspects me of what?"
"—of being a fugitive from the law who left the circus to avoid being arrested. It is absurd, ridiculous! Only such a man as he is would dream of such a thing. If ten thousand persons testified under oath that such was the case I'd not believe them."
"You'd not believe them?" he echoed, and he hugged to himself his inherent right to her faith in him as an honest man, for dishonest he had never been.
"No, I'd not believe them. It seems to me now that I believe only in you. In all humanity I know of no one I trust so much—my father, my brothers, even my sweet dead—" She hesitated, then finished, fervently: "Yes, even my mother. She would forgive me if she were here and understood."