ard, hoarse voice:

"Ah! you don't know, Teddy, what I have suffered--how I have been the
innocent victim of a foul and dastardly plot. I--I was entrapped--I----"

"Entrapped!" I echoed. "By whom? Not by Digby Kemsley? He was not the
sort of man."

"He is your friend, I know. But if you knew the truth you would hate
him--hate him, with as deep and fierce a hatred as I do now," she
declared, with a strange look in her great eyes.

"You told me he had forced you to go to his flat."

"He did."

"Why?"

"Because he wanted to tell me something--to----"

"To tell you what?"

"I refuse to explain--I can't tell you, Teddy."

"Because it would be betraying his secret--eh?" I remarked with
bitterness. "And, yet, in the same breath you have told me you hate him.
Surely, this attitude of yours is an unusual one--is it not? You cannot
hate him and strive to shield him at the same moment!"

She paused for a second before replying. Then she said:

"I admit that my attitude towards your friend is a somewhat strange one,
but there are reasons--strong, personal reasons of my own--which prevent
me revealing to you the whole of what is a strange and ghastly story.
Surely it will suffice you to know that I did not conceal all knowledge
of your friend and call upon him in secret all of my own free will. No,
Teddy, I loved you--and I still love you, dear--far too well for that."

"I trusted you, Phrida, but you deceived me," I replied, with a poignant
bitterness in my heart.

"Under compulsion. Because----" and she paused with a look of terror in
her eyes.

"Because what?" I asked slowly, placing my hand tenderly upon her
shoulder.

She shrank from contact with me.

"No. I--I can't tell you. It--it's all too terrible, too horrible!" she
whispered hoarsely, covering her white face with her hands. "I loved you,
but, alas! all my happiness, all the joy of which I have so long dreamed,
has slipped away from me because of the one false step--my one foolish
action--of which I have so long repented."

"Tell me, Phrida," I urged, in deep earnestness, bending down to her.
"Confide in me."

"No," she replied, with an air of determination. "It is my own affair. I
have acted foolishly and must bear the consequences."

"But surely you will not sacrifice our love rather than tell me the
truth!" I cried.

Hot tears welled in her eyes, and I felt her frail form tremble beneath
my touch.

"Alas! I am compelled," she faltered.