und which the moonlit world
spun drunkenly.

Her voice was incredulous, far away.

"You don't know?" she repeated, slowly. "You don't know what you
did?"

Then, for the first time, he remembered that he had not told her of
the blind door between himself and the other years. He had presented
himself only on a plea of guilty to the charge, without even the
palliation of forgetfulness.

Slowly steeling himself for the ordeal, he went through his story. He
told it as he had told Steele, but he added to it all that he had not
told Steele--all of the certainty that was building itself against his
future out of his past. He presented the case step by step as a
prosecutor might have done, adding bit of testimony after bit of
testimony, and ending with the sentence from the letter, which told
him that he had gone West. He had played the coward long enough. Now,
he did not even mention the hope he had tried to foster, that there
might be a mistake. It was all so horribly certain that those hopes
were ghosts, and he could no longer call them from their graves. The
girl listened without a word or an interruption of any sort.

"And so," he said calmly at the end, "the possibility that I vaguely
feared has come forward. The only thing that I know of my other life
is a disgraceful thing--and ruin."

There was a long, torturing silence as she sat steadily, almost
hypnotically, gazing into his eyes.

Then, a remarkable thing happened. The girl came to her feet with the
old lithe grace that had for the moment forsaken her, leaving her a
shape of slender distress. She rose buoyantly and laughed! With a
quick step forward, she threw her arms around his neck, and stood
looking into his drawn face.

He caught at her arms almost savagely.

"Don't!" he commanded, harshly. "Don't!"

"Why?" Her question was serene.

"Because it was Robert Saxon that you loved. You sha'n't touch Carter.
I can't let Carter touch you." He was holding her wrists tightly, and
pressing her away from him.

"I have never touched Carter," she said, confidently. "They lied about
it, dear. You were never Carter."

In the white light, her upturned eyes were sure with confidence.

"Now, you listen," she ordered. "You told me a case that your
imagination has constructed from foundation to top. It is an ingenious
case. Its circumstantial evidence is skilfully woven into conviction.
They have hanged men on that sort of evidence, but here there is a
court of