Stella rose suddenly to her feet.

“Oh, if I had known that on the night in Chitipur!  What a difference it would have made!” She turned swiftly to him.  “Couldn’t you have told me?”

“I hadn’t a chance.  I hadn’t five minutes with you alone.  And you wouldn’t have believed me if I had had the chance.  I left my pipe behind me in order to come back and tell you.  I had only the time then to tell you that I would write.”

“Yes, yes,” she answered, and again the cry burst from her:  “What a difference it would have made!  Merely to have known that you really wanted me!”

She would never have taken that rifle from the corner and searched for the cartridges, that she might kill herself!  Whether she had consented or not to go away and ruin Thresk’s future she would have had a little faith wherewith to go on and face the world.  If she had only known!  But up on the top of Bignor Hill a blow had been struck under which her faith had reeled and it had never had a chance of recovery.  She laughed harshly.  The heart of her tragedy was now revealed to her.  She saw herself the sport of gods who sat about like cruel louts torturing a helpless animal and laughing stupidly at its sufferings.  She turned again to Thresk and held out her hand.

“Thank you.  You would have ruined yourself for me.”

“Ruin’s a large word,” he answered, and still holding her hand he drew her down again.  She yielded reluctantly.  She might misread his character, but when the feelings and emotions were aroused she had the unerring insight of her sex.  She was warned by it now.  She looked at Thresk with startled eyes.

“Why have you told me all this?” she asked in suspense, ready for flight.

“I want to prepare you.  There’s a way out of the trouble—­the honest way for both of us:  to make a clean breast of it together and together take what follows.”

She was on her feet and away from him in a second.

“No, no,” she cried in alarm, and Thresk mistook the cause of the alarm.

“You can’t be tried again, Stella.  That’s over.  You have been acquitted.”

She temporised.

“But you?”

“I?” and he shrugged his shoulders.  “I take the consequences.  I doubt if they would be so very heavy.  There would be some sympathy.  And afterwards—­it would be as though you had slipped down from Chitipur to Bombay and joined me as I had planned.  We can make the best of our lives together.”

There was so much sincerity in his manner, so much simplicity she could not doubt him; and the immensity of the sacrifice he was prepared to make overwhelmed her.  It was not merely scandal and the Divorce Court which he was ready to brave now.  He had gone beyond the plan contemplated at Bombay.  He was willing to go hand in hand with her into the outer darkness, laying down all that he had laboured for unsparingly.

“You would do that for me?” she said.  “Oh, you put me to shame!” and she covered her face with her hands.