A little wave of pink beat into her cheeks. “I don’t want—if I can help it—to think of my husband as—as a——”
“A murderer. Is that it?” he flung at her brutally.
She nodded her head twice. The word hit her, in his savage voice, like a blow in the face.
“Then why don’t you ask Mac? Are you afraid he’d lie to you?”
“I know he wouldn’t,” she answered with spirit.
“Well, then?” He watched her with hard eyes, still doubtful of her.
“I’m his wife. Isn’t it natural I should want to know the truth?”
“What are you trying to put over on me? Why don’t you go to Mac and ask him?”
She threw herself on his mercy. “We—we’ve quarrelled. I can’t go to him. There’s nobody else to tell me but you.”
There were dark shadows under the big eyes in the colourless face. She had suffered, he guessed, during these last weeks as she never had before. Life had taken toll of her pride and her gaiety. She looked frail and spent.