dragging the name of Peyton through heaven knew what depths. He had thought
of that first, Denis swore, rather than of the money. The money, of course,
had made a difference,--he was too honest not to own it--but not till
afterward, he declared--would have declared on his honour, but that the
word tripped him up, and sent a flush to his forehead.

Thus, in broken phrases, he flung his defence at her: a defence improvised,
pieced together as he went along, to mask the crude instinctiveness of his
act. For with increasing clearness Kate saw, as she listened, that there
had been no real struggle in his mind; that, but for the grim logic of
chance, he might never have felt the need of any justification. If the
woman, after the manner of such baffled huntresses, had wandered off in
search of fresh prey, he might, quite sincerely, have congratulated himself
on having saved a decent name and an honest fortune from her talons. It was
the price she had paid to establish her claim that for the first time
brought him to a startled sense of its justice. His conscience responded
only to the concrete pressure of facts.

It was with the anguish of this discovery that Kate Orme locked herself in
at the end of their talk. How the talk had ended, how at length she had got
him from the room and the house, she recalled but confusedly. The tragedy
of the woman's death, and of his own share in it, were as nothing in the
disaster of his bright irreclaimableness. Once, when she had cried out,
"You would have married me and said nothing," and he groaned back, "But
I _have_ told you," she felt like a trainer with a lash above some
bewildered animal.

But she persisted savagely. "You told me because you had to; because your
nerves gave way; because you knew it couldn't hurt you to tell." The
perplexed appeal of his gaze had almost checked her. "You told me because