“I am not laying stress upon them, Stella, but they count,” Thresk continued.  “And I am telling you that they count because I am going to add that I should tell that lie again to-morrow, were the trial to-morrow and you a prisoner.  I should tell it again to save you again.  Yes, to save you.  But when you go and—­let me put it very plainly—­use that lie to your advantage, why then I am bound to cry ‘stop.’  Don’t you see that?  You are using the lie to marry a man and keep him in ignorance of the truth.  You can’t do that, Stella!  You would be miserable yourself if you did all your life.  You would never feel safe for a moment.  You would be haunted by a fear that some day he would learn the truth and not from you.  Oh, I am sure of it.”  He caught her hands and pressed them earnestly.  “Tell him, Stella, tell him!”

Stella Ballantyne rose to her feet with a strange look upon her face.  Her eyes half closed as though to shut out a vision of past horrors.  She turned to Thresk with a white face and her hands tightly clenched.

“You don’t know what happened on that night, after you rode away to catch your train?”

“No.”

“I think you ought to know—­before you sit in judgment”; and so at last in that quiet library under the Sussex Downs the tragic story of that night was told.  For Thresk as he listened and watched, its terrors lived again in the eyes and the hushed voice of Stella Ballantyne, the dark walls seemed to fall back and dissolve.  The moonlit plain of far-away Chitipur stretched away in front of him to the dim hill where the old silent palaces crumbled; and midway between them and the green signal-lights of the railway the encampment blazed like the clustered lights of a small town.  But Thresk learnt more than the facts.  The springs of conduct were disclosed to him; the woman revealed herself, dark places were made light; and he bowed himself beneath a new burden of remorse.

CHAPTER XXVI

TWO STRANGERS

“You came back to the tent,” she began, “and ever since then you have misunderstood what you saw.  For this is the truth:  I was going to kill myself.”

Thresk was startled as he had not expected to be; and a great wave of relief swept over him and uplifted his soul.  Here was the simplest explanation, yet it had never occurred to him.  Always he had been besieged by the vision of Stella standing quietly by the table, deliberately preparing her rifle for use, always he had linked up that vision with the death of Stephen Ballantyne in a dreadful connection.  He did not doubt that she spoke the truth now.  Looking at her and noticing the anguish of her face, he could not doubt it.  So definite a premeditation as he had imagined there had not been, and relief carried him to pity.

“So it had come to that?” he said.

“Yes,” replied Stella.  “And you had your share in bringing it to that—­you who sit in judgment.”