"She!--What am I saying! We have plunged into those damnable inferences and I haven't given you the facts. Wait. I shall contradict all this in a moment. I thought, she must have done this for her children. She must be given another chance. And I approached the thing on my very knees--not to let her know that I knew, only to hint that I was not unprepared, had guessed--could meet it, and help her to meet the problems it would bring into our lives. Help her! She stood and faced me as if I had insulted her. 'I have been your father's widow for twenty-two years. If that fact is not sacred to you, it is to me. Never dare to speak of this to me again!'"
"Ah," said Moya in a long-drawn sigh, "then she did not"--
"Oh, she did, explicitly! For I went on to speak of it. It was my last chance. I asked her how she--we--could possibly go through with it; how with this knowledge between us we could look each other in the face--and go on living.
"'Put this hallucination out of your mind,' she said. 'That man and I are strangers.'"
"Was that--would you call that a lie?" asked Moya fearfully.
"You can see your answer in her face. I do not say that hers was the first lie. It must always be foolish, I think, to evade the facts of life as we make them for ourselves. He refused to meet his facts, from the noblest motives;--but now I'm tangling you all up again! Rest your head here, darling. This is such a business! It is a pity I cannot tell you his whole story. Half the meaning of all this is lost. But--here is a solemn declaration in writing, signed John Hagar, in which this man we are speaking of says that Adam Bogardus was his partner, who died in the woods and was buried by his hand; that he knew his story, all the scenes and circumstances of his life in many a long talk they had together, as well as he knew his own. In his delirium he must have confused himself with his old partner, and half in dreams, he said, half in the crazy satisfaction of pretending to himself he had a son, he allowed the delusion to go on; saw it work upon me, and half feared it, half encouraged it. Afterwards he was frightened at the thought of meeting my mother, who would know him for an impostor. His seeming scruples were fear of exposure, not consideration for her. This was why he guarded their interview so carefully. 'No harm's been done,' he says, 'if you'll act now like a sensible man. I'll be disappointed in you if you make your mother any trouble about this. You've treated me as square as any man could treat another. Remember, I say so, and think as kindly as you can of a harmless, loony old impostor'--and he signs himself 'John Hagar,'--which shows again how one lie leads to another. We go to find 'John Hagar.'"