t-front, that the sergeant's breeches, and those transitory red-hot
pin-heads their cigars. Rigden had superb sight. He could see all this
at something like a furlong's range. Yet all that he did see was Moya
with the moon upon her, a feathery and white silhouette, edged with a
greater whiteness, and crowned as with gold.

"Your father!"

"Yes, I am his son and heir."

Her tone was low with grief and horror, but his was unintentionally
sardonic. It jarred upon the woman, and reacted against the man. Moya's
first feeling had been undefiled by self; but in an instant her tears
were poisoned at their fount.

"And you told me your father was dead!"

The new note was one of the eternal scale between man and woman. It was
the note of unbridled reproach.

"Never in so many words, I think," said Rigden, unfortunately.

"In so many words!" echoed Moya, but the sneer was her last. "I hate
such contemptible distinctions!" she cried out honestly. "Better have
cheated me wholesale, as you did the police; there was something
thorough about that."

"And I hope that you can now see some excuse for it," rejoined Rigden
with more point.

"For that, yes!" cried Moya at once. "Oh, dear, yes, no one can blame
you for screening your poor father. I forgive you for cheating the
police--it would have been unnatural not to--but I never, never shall
forgive you for what _was_ unnatural--cheating _me_."

Rigden took a sharper tone.

"You are too fond of that word," said he, "and I object to it as between
me and you."

"You have earned it, though!"

"I deny it. I simply held my tongue about a tragedy in my own family
which you could gain nothing by knowing. There was no cheating in that."

"I disagree with you!" said Moya very hotly, but he went on as though
she had not spoken.

"You speak as though I had hushed up something in my own life. Can't you
see the difference? He was convicted under another name; it was a thing
nobody knew but ourselves; nobody need ever have known. Or so I
thought," he ended in a wretched voice.

But Moya was outwardly unmoved.

"All the more reason why you should have told me, and trusted me," she
insisted.

"God knows I thought of it! But I knew the difference it would make. And
I was right!"

It was his turn to be bitter, and Moya's to regain complete control.

"So you think it's that that makes the difference now?"

"Of course it is."

"Would you believe me if I assured you it was not?"