She roused at that. "Oh, they must not!" she cried in distress. "Poor Thalassa! He must tell them the truth."
"The question is--what is the truth?" It flashed through his mind as he spoke that his interrogation was the echo of one put to him by his father before he left Cornwall.
"The truth is, that Thalassa and I left the house together that night before it happened. Oh, cannot they believe that? Cannot it be proved?"
"I could tell them when you left," he said in a low tone.
"You!" she cried, looking at him with a kind of fear. "How do you know?"
"Because I saw you. I was standing outside, close to the house."
"Why were you there?" she put in quickly.
He was slower in answering. "I had gone to see your father--about you. I was standing there, thinking ... waiting, when the front door opened, and you and Thalassa came out. I was surprised to see you, but it seemed to me an opportunity--a final chance--to speak to you again. I started after you, Sisily, once more to ask you to consider my love for you, but you and Thalassa were swallowed up in the darkness of the moors before I could reach you. I followed with the intention of overtaking you, but I got lost on the moors instead, and was wandering about in the blackness for nearly half an hour before I found my way back to Flint House again."
"Could you not tell them--the police--that?" she asked, a little wistfully.
"It would be useless," he solemnly replied.
"What do you mean?" she said breathlessly.
His rejoinder was a long time in coming. When his set lips moved the words were barely audible. "Because I would not be believed. Because I went straight up the path to the house, determined to see your father before it grew later. The front door was open, and the house seemed in complete darkness. I entered, and went upstairs. There was a light in your father's study. I found your father--dead." He fixed care-worn eyes upon her. "That story sounds incredible, even to you, doesn't it? But--"
"Oh!" That startled cry seemed wrung from her involuntarily. Then, swiftly, as if her mind had detached itself to look on her own actions that night through his eyes: "You thought, you believed that I--" She checked herself, but her look completed the thought.