He wanted her positive meaning, as she perceived, having hoped that it was generally taken and current, and the shock to him over.

‘I had . . .  I had not a suspicion of doing harm, Percy.’

‘But what harm have you done?  No riddles!’

His features gave sign of the break in their common ground, the widening gulf.

’I went . . . it was a curious giddiness:  I can’t account for it.  I thought . . .’

‘Went?  You went where?’

’Last night.  I would speak intelligibly:  my mind has gone.  Ah! you look.  It is not so bad as my feeling.’

‘But where did you go last night?  What!—­to Tonans?’

She drooped her head:  she saw the track of her route cleaving the darkness in a demoniacal zig-zag and herself in demon’s grip.

‘Yes,’ she confronted him.  ‘I went to Mr. Tonans.’

‘Why?’

‘I went to him—­’

‘You went alone?’

‘I took my maid.’

‘Well?’

‘It was late when you left me . . .’

‘Speak plainly!’

‘I am trying:  I will tell you all.’

‘At once, if you please.’

’I went to him—­why?  There is no accounting for it.  He sneered constantly at my stale information.’

‘You gave him constant information?’

’No:  in our ordinary talk.  He railed at me for being “out of it.”  I must be childish:  I went to show him—­oh! my vanity!  I think I must have been possessed.’

She watched the hardening of her lover’s eyes.  They penetrated, and through them she read herself insufferably.

But it was with hesitation still that he said:  ‘Then you betrayed me?’

‘Percy!  I had not a suspicion of mischief.’

‘You went straight to this man?’

‘Not thinking . . .’

‘You sold me to a journalist!’

’I thought it was a secret of a day.  I don’t think you—­no, you did not tell me to keep it secret.  A word from you would have been enough.  I was in extremity.’

Dacier threw his hands up and broke away.  He had an impulse to dash from the room, to get a breath of different air.  He stood at the window, observing tradesmen’s carts, housemaids, blank doors, dogs, a beggar fifer.  Her last words recurred to him.  He turned:  ’You were in extremity, you said.  What is the meaning of that?  What extremity?’

Her large dark eyes flashed powerlessly; her shape appeared to have narrowed; her tongue, too, was a feeble penitent.

‘You ask a creature to recall her acts of insanity.’

‘There must be some signification in your words, I suppose.’

’I will tell you as clearly as I can.  You have the right to be my judge.  I was in extremity—­that is, I saw no means . . .  I could not write:  it was ruin coming.’

‘Ah?—­you took payment for playing spy?’

’I fancied I could retrieve . . .  Now I see the folly, the baseness.  I was blind.’