ll I am good for now. And she has done everything for
me. The sortie at the court house was hers. She has kept me hidden in
her house all these days; and, when that was searched, in the convent
garden. She has chartered a lugger to take us to Mexico. It is lying
out in the bay, now, on the other side of Chestnut Street Hill. She
has slipped me out of her house with a group of her peons for a screen.
I am going aboard now. She is coming out at dawn." He lifted his head
and looked at me again, smiling a little, "And if your conscience can
keep you from reporting this before eight o'clock this morning we shall
be safe."

He said it in a monotonous, dull tone, as if there were no longer any
question about it, as if for some reason the thing were irrevocable!
And yet I couldn't understand why. There was no reason in it at all
that one could see. I had the dreadful sense of fighting something
invisible.

"But all that she has done for you," I insisted, "hasn't made any one
happy. It has only kept making things worse and worse for you and
every one else, and finally it has made you a coward."

How that made him wince! "That's not quite the fact, that's too ugly,"
he said quickly. "I can't let you think that; it isn't all my
weakness. It is partly that I owe it to her. I am bound to do this,
just as you were bound to speak the truth in court. You won't
understand it I know, for to you the world is black and white, and each
incident stands by itself. But as a man lives these incidents are
interwoven like the links of a chain, each one depending on the others,
so that sometimes what appears to be a bad thing is really the only
decent thing if one knows the circumstances."

"But it is because you are only looking at a little string of wrong
things, that the last one of them looks right, because it's like the
others," I said. "If you go back to the big wrong that started them
all and straighten it out, you will see that everything that follows
will straighten itself."

He threw back his head, looking down at me with an expression I could
not make out, astonished, incredulous, and half ashamed. "Out of the
mouths of babes--" I thought that was what he said very softly. Then,
"And this great wrong, Miss Fenwick?"

I was conscious that somehow I had gained an advantage, and I kept my
eyes upon him as if in such a fashion I could hold it tight. "You must
tell them how Martin Rood really died."

"Ah, never!