d the knowledge.

'Why did you tell me?' she repeated, and the words were an accusation.

'You wished to know,' he replied doggedly, 'and it seemed to me that you
had the right to know.'

'Right!' she exclaimed, 'right! What right had I to know? What right had
you to tell me?'

She rose to her feet suddenly as she spoke and confronted Drake. He
looked into her eyes steadily, but with a certain perplexity.

'I felt bound to tell you,' he said simply, and his simplicity appealed
to her by its frank recognition of an obligation to her.

'Why,' she asked herself, 'why did he feel bound? Merely because I wished
to know the truth of the matter, or because he himself was implicated in
it as the instrument of Gorley's punishment?' Either reason was
sufficient to appease her. She inclined to the latter; there were
conclusions to be inferred from it which staunched her wounded pride.

Clarice turned away. Drake watched her set a foot upon the rail of the
fender, lay her hand upon the mantelshelf and support her forehead upon
it. After a little she raised her head and spoke with an air of
apologising for him.

'Of course,' she said. 'You could not know that there was anything
between myself and--and him.'

'No; I could not know that. How should I, for I did not know you? And I
am glad that I didn't know.'

Drake spoke with some earnestness, and Clarice looked at him in surprise.

'It would have made my duty so much harder to do,' he explained.

With a little cry of irritation Clarice slipped her foot from the fender
and moved from him back to the couch. She had given him the opportunity
to escape from his position and he refused to make use of it; he seemed
indeed unable to perceive it. However, she clung to it obstinately and
repeated it.

'You could not know there was anything between us'; she emphasised the
words deliberately. Drake mistook the intention of the emphasis.

'But was there,' he exclaimed, 'at the time? I didn't think of that, Miss
Le Mesurier--'

'Oh no, no!' she interrupted. 'Not at the time.' The man was
impracticable, and yet his very impracticability aroused in a measure her
admiration. 'So you would have shot him just the same, had you known?'

'Shot him?' asked Drake almost absently.

'Yes.'

'Didn't I tell you? I beg your pardon. I didn't shoot him at all. I
hanged him.'

Clarice was stunned by the words, and the more because of the dull,
seemingly callous accent with which they were