“No,” he said quietly, and laid a constraining hand upon her as she sat.  “That is not so.”

She contracted at his touch.  “You don’t know me.  I wrote you a note this evening, trying to explain.  I told you I meant to leave you.  But—­I didn’t mean you to read it till I was gone.  Did you read it?”

“No,” he said.  “I guessed what you had done.”

Desperately she went on.  “You’ve got to know the worst.  I was ready to go away with him.  We—­were such old friends, and I thought—­I thought—­I knew him.”  She bowed herself lower under his hand.  Her face was hidden.  “I thought he was at least a gentleman.  I thought I could trust him.  I—­believed in him.”

“Ah!” said Field.  “And now?”

“Now”—­her head was sunk almost to her knees—­“I know him—­for what—­he is.”  Her voice broke in bitter weeping.  “And I had given so much—­so much—­to save him!” she sobbed.

“I know,” Field said.  “He wasn’t worth the sacrifice.”  He stood for a moment or two as though in doubt; then knelt suddenly down beside her and drew her to him.

She made as if she would resist him, but finally, as he held her, impulsively she yielded.  She sobbed out her agony against his breast.  And he soothed her as he might have soothed a child.

But though presently he dried her tears, he did not kiss her.  He spoke, but his voice was devoid of all emotion.

“You are blaming the wrong person for all this.  It wasn’t Wentworth’s fault.  He has probably been a crook all his life.  It wasn’t yours.  You couldn’t be expected to detect it.  But”—­he paused—­“don’t you realise now why I am offering you the only reparation in my power?” he said.

She was trembling, but she did not raise her head or attempt to move, though his arms were ready to release her.

“No.  I don’t,” she said.

Very steadily he went on:  “You have not wronged me.  It was I who did the wrong.  I could have made you see his guilt.  It would have been infinitely easier than establishing his innocence before the world.  But—­I have always wanted the unattainable.  I knew that you were out of reach, and so I wanted you.  Afterwards, very soon afterwards, I found I wanted even more than what I had bargained for.  I wanted your friendship.  That was what the sapphire stood for.  You didn’t understand.  I had handicapped myself too heavily.  So I took what I could get, and missed the rest.”

He stopped.  She still lay against his breast.

“Why did you want—­my friendship?” she whispered.

He made a curious gesture, as if he faced at last the inevitable.  When he answered her his voice was very low.  He seemed to speak against his will.  “I—­loved you.”

“Ah!” It was scarcely more than a breath uttering the words.  “And you never told me!”

He was silent.

She raised herself at last and faced him.  Her hands were on his shoulders.  “Percival,” she said, and there was a strange light shining in the eyes that he had dried.  “Is your love so small, then—­as to be not—­worth—­mentioning?”