'Moy!" It was a strangled cry from Tremayne. At last he saw
light; he understood, and, understanding, there entered his heart a
great compassion for O'Moy, a conception that he must have suffered all
the agonies of the damned in these last few days. "My God, you don't
believe that I--"

"Do you deny it?"

"The imputation? Utterly."

"And if I tell you that myself with these eyes I saw you at the window
of her room with her; if I tell you that I saw the rope ladder dangling
from her balcony; if I tell you that crouching there after I had killed
Samoval--killed him, mark me, for saying that you and my wife betrayed
me; killed him for telling me the filthy truth--if I tell you that I
heard her attempting to restrain you from going down to see what had
happened--if I tell you all this, will you still deny it, will you still
lie?"

"I will still say that all that you imply is false as hell and your own
senseless jealousy can make it.

"All that I imply? But what I state--the facts themselves, are they
true?"

"They are true. But--"

"True!" cried Miss Armytage in horror.

"Ah, wait," O'Moy bade her with his heavy sneer. "You interrupt him.
He is about to construe those facts so that they shall wear an innocent
appearance. He is about to prove himself worthy of the great sacrifice
you made to save his life. Well?" And he looked expectantly at Tremayne.

Miss Armytage looked at him too, with eyes from which the dread
passed almost at once. The captain was smiling, wistfully, tolerantly,
confidently, almost scornfully. Had he been guilty of the thing imputed
he could not have stood so in her presence.

"O'Moy," he said slowly, "I should tell you that you have played the
knave in this were it not clear to me that you have played the fool." He
spoke entirely without passion. He saw his way quite clearly. Things had
reached a pass in which for the sake of all concerned, and perhaps for
the sake of Miss Armytage more than any one, the whole truth must be
spoken without regard to its consequences to Richard Butler.

"You dare to take that tone?" began O'Moy in a voice of thunder.

"Yourself shall be the first to justify it presently. I should be angry
with you, O'Moy, for what you have done. But I find my anger vanishing
in regret. I should scorn you for the lie you have acted, for your scant
regard to your oath in the court-martial, for your attempt to combat
an imagined villainy by a real villainy. But I realise wha