h. I know you're incapable of
lying. If I only have it from your own lips I shall believe. I want to
be certain, certain.'

'Don't you realise that I would never have asked you to marry me if my
conscience hadn't been quite clear?' he said slowly. 'Don't you see that
the reasons I have for holding my tongue must be overwhelming, or I
wouldn't stand by calmly while my good name was torn from me shred by
shred?'

'But I'm going to be your wife, and I love you, and I know you love me.'

'I implore you not to insist, Lucy. Let us remember only that the past
is gone and that we love one another. It is impossible for me to tell
you anything.'

'Oh, but you must now,' she implored. 'If anything has happened, if any
part of the story is true, you must give me a chance of judging for
myself.'

'I'm very sorry. I can't.'

'But you'll kill my love for you.'

She sprang to her feet and pressed both hands to her heart.

'The doubt that lurked at the bottom of my soul, now fills me. How can
you let me suffer such maddening torture?'

An expression of anguish passed across his calm eyes. He made a gesture
of despair.

'I thought you trusted me.'

'I'll be satisfied if you'll only tell me one thing.' She put her hands
to her head with a rapid, aimless movement that showed the extremity of
her agitation. 'Oh, what has love done with me?' she cried desperately.
'I was so proud of my brother and so utterly devoted to him. But I loved
you so much that there wasn't any room in my heart for the past. I
forgot all my unhappiness and all my loss. And even now they seem so
little to me beside your love that it's you I think of first. I want to
know that I can love you freely. I'll be satisfied if you'll only tell
me that when you sent George out that night, you didn't know he'd be
killed.'

Alec looked at her steadily. And once more he saw himself in the African
tent amid the rain and the boisterous wind. At the time he sought to
persuade himself that George had a chance of escape. He told him with
his own lips that if he showed perfect self-confidence at the moment of
danger he might save himself alive; but at the bottom of his heart he
knew, he had known all along, that it was indeed death he was sending
him to, for George had not the last virtue of a scoundrel, courage.

'Only say that, Alec,' she repeated. 'Say that's not true, and I'll
believe you.'

There was a silence. Lucy's heart beat against her breast like a caged