Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/385

Rh "Basil! …"

"Yes, I mean it. I shall go away."

"How absurd you are!"

"Perhaps so—but if you think I could endure to live like this You simply don't realise what you've done. You seem to think it's nothing!"

"I'm not aware that I've done anything so frightfully serious."

"No? Well, you've shaken my whole idea of you, my belief in you—that's all. It never occurred to me not to trust you. It never occurred to me But now—I wonder if you've lied to me all along."

"I've never lied to you—never." "How can I know? How do I know what you are? I don't know you at all. I call that lying—to come back to me with a secret like that, I should never have known, except by accident, that you had had a lover."

"A lover? No."

"Yes! A man doesn't write that sort of letter unless And a man that you barely knew—a stranger—My God, Teresa, what has come to you?"

He stopped short, clenching his fists, deathly pale, the muscles about his mouth twitching violently.

"And you refuse to tell me"

"I haven't refused. I said you had no right to