He made a sharp gesture.  “Ah!” he said.  “I thought that was coming.”

“Yes, you knew it!  You knew it!” Passionately she uttered the words.  “It’s the one thing that’s got to be settled between us—­the only thing left that counts.  Yes, you mean to refuse.  I know that.  But—­before you refuse—­wait, please wait!  I am asking it quite as much for your sake as for mine.”

“And for his,” said Burke, with a twist of the lips more bitter than the words.

But she caught them up unflinching.  “Yes, and for his.  We’ve set out to save him, you and I. And—­we are not going to turn back.  Burke, I ask you to help me—­I implore you to help me—­in this thing.  You didn’t refuse before.”

“I wish to Heaven I had!” he said, “I might have known how it would end!”

“No—­no!  And you owe him your life too.  Don’t forget that!  He saved you.  Are you going to let him sink—­after that?” She reached up and held him by the shoulders, imploring him with all her soul.  “You can’t do it!  Oh, you can’t do it!” she said.  “It isn’t—­you.”

He looked at her with a certain doggedness.  “Not your conception of me perhaps,” he said, and suddenly his arms closed about her quivering form.  “But—­am I—­the sort of man you have always taken me to be?  Tell me!  Am I?”

She turned her face aside, hiding it against his shoulder.  “I know—­what you can be,” she said faintly.

“Yes.”  Grimly he answered her.  “You’ve seen the ugly side of me at last, and it’s that that you are up against now.”  He paused a moment, then very sombrely he ended.  “I might force you to tell me the whole truth of this business, but I shall not—­simply because I don’t want to hear it now.  I know very well he’s been making love to you, tempting you.  But I am going to put the infernal matter away, and forget it—­as far as possible.  We may never reach the top of the world now, but we’ll get out of this vile slough at any cost.  You won’t find me hard to live with if you only play the game,—­and put that damned scoundrel out of your mind for good.”

“And do you think I shall ever be able to forgive you?” She lifted her head with an unexpectedness that was almost startling.  Her eyes were alight, burning with a ruddy fire out of the whiteness of her face.  She spoke as she had never spoken before.  It was as if some strange force had entered into and possessed her.  “Do you think I shall ever forget—­even if you do?  Perhaps I am not enough to you now to count in that way.  You think—­perhaps—­that a slave is all you want, and that partnership, comradeship, friendship, doesn’t count.  You are willing to sacrifice all that now, and to sacrifice him with it.  But how will it be—­afterwards?  Will a slave be any comfort to you when things go wrong—­as they surely will?  Will it satisfy you to feel that my body is yours when my soul is so utterly out of sympathy, out of touch, that