“I said the one thing to say,” he answered after a moment, involuntarily laying the pistol on the table before him—­doing it, as it were, without conscious knowledge.

It fascinated Jasmine, the ugly, deadly little vehicle of oblivion.  Her eyes fastened on it, and for an instant stared at it transfixed; then she recovered herself and spoke again.

“What was the one thing to say?” she whispered.

“That you were innocent—­absolutely, that—­”

Suddenly she burst into wild laughter—­shrill, acrid, cheerless, hysterical, her face turned upward, her hands clasped under her chin, her body shaking with what was not laughter, but the terrifying agitation of a broken organism.

He waited till she had recovered somewhat, and then he repeated his words.

“I said that you were innocent absolutely; that Fellowes’ letter was the insolence and madness of a voluptuary, that you had only been wilful and indiscreet, and that—­”

In a low, mechanical tone from which was absent any agitation, he told her all he had said to Rudyard, and what Rudyard had said to him.  Every word had been burned into his brain, and nearly every word was now repeated, while she sat silent, looking at her hands clasped on the table before her.  When he came to the point where Rudyard went from the house, leaving Stafford to deal with Fellowes, she burst again into laughter, mocking, wilful, painful.

“You were left to set things right, to be the lord high executioner—­you, Ian!”

How strange his name sounded on her lips now—­foreign, distant, revealing the nature of the situation more vividly than all the words which had been said, than all that had been done.

“Rudyard did not think of killing you, I suppose,” she went on, presently, with a bitter motion of the lips, and a sardonic note creeping into the voice.

“No, I thought of that,” he answered, quietly, “as you know.”  His eyes sought the weapon on the table involuntarily.  “That would have been easy enough,” he added.  “I was not thinking of myself, or of Fellowes, but only of you—­and Rudyard.”

“Only of me—­and Rudyard,” she repeated with drooping eyes, which suddenly became alive again with feeling and passion and wildness.  “Wasn’t it rather late for that?”

The words stung him beyond endurance.  He rose and leaned across the table towards her.

“At least I recognized what I had done, what you had done, and I tried to face it.  I did not disguise it.  My letter to you proves that.  But nevertheless I was true to you.  I did not deceive you—­ever.  I loved you—­ah, I loved you as few women have been loved! . . .  But you, you might have made a mistake where Rudyard was concerned, made the mistake once, but if you wronged him, you wronged me infinitely more.  I was ready to give up all, throw all my life, my career, to the winds, and prove myself loyal to that which was more than all; or I was willing to eliminate myself from the scene forever.  I was willing to pay the price—­any price—­just to stand by what was the biggest thing in my life.  But you were true to nothing—­to nothing—­to nobody.”