,"
he asked, "known a man to lie without some purpose? Men lie for the sake
of profit, they lie out of cowardice or malice, or else because they are
vain and vulgar boasters. I know of no other causes that will drive
a man to falsehood, save that--ah, yes!--" (and he flashed a sidelong
glance at Lionel)--"save that sometimes a man will lie to shield
another, out of self-sacrifice. There you have all the spurs that urge
a man to falsehood. Can any of these be urging me to-night? Reflect!
Ask yourself what purpose I could serve by lying to you now. Consider
further that I have come to loathe you for your unfaith; that I
desire naught so much as to punish you for that and for all its bitter
consequences to me that I have brought you hither to exact payment from
you to the uttermost farthing. What end then can I serve by falsehood?"

"All this being so, what end could you serve by truth?" she countered.

"To make you realize to the full the injustice that you did. To make you
understand the wrongs for which you are called to pay. To prevent you
from conceiving yourself a martyr; to make you perceive in all its
deadly bitterness that what now comes to you is the inevitable fruit of
your own faithlessness."

"Sir Oliver, do you think me a fool?" she asked him.

"Madam, I do--and worse," he answered.

"Ay, that is clear," she agreed scornfully, "since even now you waste
breath in attempting to persuade me against my reason. But words
will not blot out facts. And though you talk from now till the day of
judgment no word of yours can efface those bloodstains in the snow that
formed a trail from that poor murdered body to your own door; no word of
yours can extinguish the memory of the hatred between him and you, and
of your own threat to kill him; nor can it stifle the recollection of
the public voice demanding your punishment. You dare to take such a tone
as you are taking with me? You dare here under Heaven to stand and lie
to me that you may give false gloze to the villainy of your present
deed--for that is the purpose of your falsehood, since you asked me what
purpose there could be for it. What had you to set against all that, to
convince me that your hands were clean, to induce me to keep the troth
which--God forgive me!--I had plighted to you?"

"My word," he answered her in a ringing voice.

"Your lie," she amended.

"Do not suppose," said he, "that I could not support my word by proofs if
called upon to do so."