"She!--What am I saying! We have plunged into those damnable inferences
and I haven't given you the facts. Wait. I shall contradict all this in a
moment. I thought, she must have done this for her children. She must be
given another chance. And I approached the thing on my very knees--not to
let her know that I knew, only to hint that I was not unprepared, had
guessed--could meet it, and help her to meet the problems it would bring
into our lives. Help her! She stood and faced me as if I had insulted her.
'I have been your father's widow for twenty-two years. If that fact is not
sacred to you, it is to me. Never dare to speak of this to me again!'"

"Ah," said Moya in a long-drawn sigh, "then she did not"--

"Oh, she did, explicitly! For I went on to speak of it. It was my last
chance. I asked her how she--we--could possibly go through with it; how
with this knowledge between us we could look each other in the face--and
go on living.

"'Put this hallucination out of your mind,' she said. 'That man and I are
strangers.'"

"Was that--would you call that a lie?" asked Moya fearfully.

"You can see your answer in her face. I do not say that hers was the first
lie. It must always be foolish, I think, to evade the facts of life as we
make them for ourselves. He refused to meet his facts, from the noblest
motives;--but now I'm tangling you all up again! Rest your head here,
darling. This is such a business! It is a pity I cannot tell you his whole
story. Half the meaning of all this is lost. But--here is a solemn
declaration in writing, signed John Hagar, in which this man we are