Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/323

 danger," she quietly explained. "There was too much of that in the past."

"Precisely. And that past is reaching out a hand to threaten you, when you least expect it."

She sank into a chair facing him.

"What have I done?" she asked him.

"It's nothing you've done. It's something you may be compelled to do."

"Compelled by whom?" was her quick inquiry.

"By Watchel," was his answer. She looked up, as though the name had startled her.

"Who told you this?"

"Isn't it enough that I know? Can't you ever learn to trust me?"

"But you haven't told me what you know," she replied, and the familiar tremolo of the full-noted contralto voice stirred him until his own voice shook.

"There's only one thing I know," he suddenly found himself saying as he sat facing her in the softened light, oppressed by the futility of all further fencing over trivialities.

"Only one thing?" she echoed with a timorous movement of her white hand. He knew the time was wrong, and the place was wrong, but he could not keep back the words.

"The only thing I know is that I love you, that I've loved you from the first day I saw you. I've known that through every hour of the time I've had to act as your enemy, and now that I've found you I know it more than ever."

His voice was quite steady by this time, but the colour had gone from his face until it was almost as