Requires Solution.
With his face to the intruder, Chisholm stood leaning with his hand upon the back of a chair.
“Friends are to me useless, Miss Mortimer,” he answered her.
“Others perhaps are useless, but I may prove to be the exception,” she said very gravely. “You want a friend, and I am ready to become yours.”
“Your offer is a kind one,” he replied, still regarding her with suspicion, for he could not divine the real reason of her visit there, or why she had concealed herself, unless she had done so to learn, if possible, his secret. “I thank you for it, but cannot accept it.”
“But, surely, you do not intend to perform such a cowardly act as to take your own life,” she said in a measured tone of voice, looking at him with her wide-open eyes. “It is my duty to prevent you from committing such a mad action as that.”
“I quite admit that it would be mad,” he said. “But the victim of circumstances can only accept the inevitable.”
“Why, how strangely and despondently you talk, Mr Chisholm! From my hiding-place at the back of those curtains, I’ve been watching you this hour or more. Your nervousness has developed into madness, if you will permit me to criticise. Had it not been for my presence here you would by this time have taken your life. For what reason? Shall I tell you? Because, Mr Chisholm, you are a coward. You are in terror of an exposure that you dare not face.”
“How do you know?” he cried fiercely, springing towards her in alarm. “Who told you?”
“You told me yourself,” she answered. “Your own lips denounced you.”