He paused, and looked at her searchingly.
"Miss Vaughan, this dead man's book and The Silver Poppy are one and the same creation!"
Her eyes were luminous, and were riveted on his face. All color had faded out of her cheek, and in the dim light her skin looked greenish-yellow and dead. She did not speak for several minutes.
So it was all to end like this! That was the thought which pirouetted insanely up and down the foreground of her consciousness.
"You--you don't mean," she cried huskily, "you can't mean that you believe I--I stole this book?"
"You have refused to let me believe anything else," he answered, without a trace of feeling in his voice.
"But you would not--you dare not make any such--any such absurd belief public!" she cried, leaning closer toward him. The room grew unendurably hot and close, and the walls seemed reeling and swaying about her.
"You would not!" she cried again, in a higher key, putting her hand up to her head.
Their eyes met. She saw but one thing, and that thing was that there dwelt no touch of kindness or commiseration on his face.
"But they're lies, all lies!" she cried shrilly.
"That, you will have every chance to show when the time comes!"
For just a moment he hesitated, perplexed, perhaps almost doubting. He stood before her with a face almost as white as her own.
"Will you swear before God, your Maker, that this is the truth, and nothing but the truth?"
She stood before him, with her eyes still fixed on his.
"I swear before God, my Maker, that this is the--No! No! I will _not_!" she cried hysterically. "I will not! It is all some trick, some cowardly trap! Who are you--who _are_ you, to degrade me in this way? Who are you, that I must answer to you as to a judge? You are detaining me here; you are holding me a prisoner against my will!"
"Yes, who are you?" she went on wildly, catching ludicrously at ineffectual trifles, as the drowning do. "Who, indeed, _are_ you? You, with your pharasaical long face and your own underhand schemes? You, closeted alone with married women--with a woman who has made a fool of herself for you, who can't even hide her infatuation! Who are you, who have come into a home and stolen an honorable wife's love away from her husband--who are you to sit up and prate of honor and honesty?"