‘I have often wondered how your newspaper men got their information,’ he said, and muttered:  ‘Money-women!’ adding:  ’Idiots to prime them!  And I one of the leaky vessels!  Well, we learn.  I have been rather astonished at times of late at the scraps of secret knowledge displayed by Tonans.  If he flourishes his thousands!  The wonder is, he doesn’t corrupt the Ministers’ wives.  Perhaps he does.  Marriage will become a danger-sign to Parliamentary members.  Foreign women do these tricks . . . women of a well-known stamp.  It is now a full year, I think, since I began to speak to you of secret matters—­and congratulated myself, I recollect, on your thirst for them.’

’Percy, if you suspect that I have uttered one word before last night, you are wrong.  I cannot paint my temptation or my loss of sense last night.  Previously I was blameless.  I thirsted, yes; but in the hope of helping you.’

He looked at her.  She perceived how glitteringly loveless his eyes had grown.  It was her punishment; and though the enamoured woman’s heart protested it excessive, she accepted it.

‘I can never trust you again,’ he said.

‘I fear you will not,’ she replied.

His coming back to her after the departure of the guests last night shone on him in splendid colours of single-minded loverlike devotion.  ’I came to speak to my own heart.  I thought it would give you pleasure; thought I could trust you utterly.  I had not the slightest conception I was imperilling my honour . . . !’

He stopped.  Her bloodless fixed features revealed an intensity of anguish that checked him.  Only her mouth, a little open for the sharp breath, appeared dumbly beseeching.  Her large eyes met his like steel to steel, as of one who would die fronting the weapon.

He strangled a loathsome inclination to admire.

‘So good bye,’ he said.

She moved her lips.

He said no more.  In half a minute he was gone.

To her it was the plucking of life out of her breast.

She pressed her hands where heart had been.  The pallor and cold of death took her body.

CHAPTER XXXV

Reveals how the true heroine of Romance comes finally to her, time of
triumph

The shutting of her house-door closed for Dacier that woman’s history in connection with himself.  He set his mind on the consequences of the act of folly—­the trusting a secret to a woman.  All were possibly not so bad:  none should be trusted.

The air of the street fanned him agreeably as he revolved the horrible project of confession to the man who had put faith in him.  Particulars might be asked.  She would be unnamed, but an imagination of the effect of naming her placarded a notorious woman in fresh paint:  two members of the same family her victims!