In which I Play a Dangerous Game.
Well—I agreed.
Yes—I agreed to pose as the hard-working compositor upon a daily newspaper and husband of the Honourable Sybil Burnet, the woman by whose hand the unknown man had fallen.
At first I hesitated, refusing to compromise her, yet she had fallen upon her knees imploring me to help her, and I was bound to fulfil the promise I had so injudiciously made.
There was no love between us now, she had declared. The flame had flickered and died out long ago.
“If you will only consent to act as though I were your wife, then I may be able to save myself,” she urged. “You will do so, will you not?”
“But why?” I had asked. “I cannot see how our pretended marriage can assist you?”
“Leave it all to me,” was her confident reply. “One day you will discern the reason.”
And then, with tears in her beautiful eyes, and kneeling at my feet, she begged again of me to act as she suggested and thus save her life.
So I consented. Yes—you may say that I was foolish, that I was injudicious, that I was still beneath the spell of her exquisite grace and matchless beauty. Perhaps I was: yet I tell you that at the moment so stunned was I by the tragedy, by what Eric had revealed, and by her midnight visit, that I hardly knew what I did.