"I know, dearest," I said, striving to calm her, and stroking her hair from her white brow. "I tell you at once that I do not give credence to any of her foul allegations, only—well, in order to satisfy myself, I have come direct to you to hear your explanation."
"My—my explanation!" she gasped, placing her hand to her brow and bowing her head. "Ah! what explanation can I make of allegations I have never heard?" she demanded. "Surely, Teddy, you are asking too much."
I grasped her hand, and holding it in mine gazed again upon her. We were standing together near the centre of the room where the glowing fire shed a genial warmth and lit up the otherwise gloomy and solemn apartment.
Ah! how sweet she seemed to me, how dainty, how charming, how very pure. And yet? Ah! the recollection of that woman's insinuations on the previous night ate like a canker-worm into my heart. And yet how I loved the pale, agitated girl before me! Was she not all the world to me?
A long and painful silence had fallen between us, a silence only broken by the whirl of a taxi passing outside and the chiming of the long, old-fashioned clock on the stairs.
At last I summoned courage to say in a calm, low voice;
"I am not asking too much, Phrida. I am only pressing you to act with your usual honesty, and tell me the truth. Surely you can have nothing to conceal?"
"How absurd you are, Teddy!" she said in her usual voice. "What can I possibly have to conceal from you?"
"Pardon me," I said; "but you have already concealed from me certain very important facts concerning my friend Digby."
"Who has told you that? The woman Petre, I suppose," she cried in anger. "Very well, believe her, if you wish."