“I will keep nothing back from you that I have told Inspector McDowell,” he answered, fighting to meet her eyes steadily.  “I almost believe I may tell you more.”

“Then—­did you speak the truth when you reported to Inspector McDowell?  Is John Keith dead?” Could Shan Tung meet those wonderful eyes as he was meeting them now, he wondered?  Could he face them and master them, as McDowell had hinted?  To McDowell the lie had come easily to his tongue.  It stuck in his throat now.  Without giving him time to prepare himself the girl had shot straight for the bull’s-eye, straight to the heart of the thing that meant life or death to him, and for a moment he found no answer.  Clearly he was facing suspicion.  She could not have driven the shaft intuitively.  The unexpectedness of the thing astonished him and then thrilled him, and in the thrill of it he found himself more than ever master of himself.

“Would you like to hear how utterly John Keith is dead and how he died?” he asked.

“Yes.  That is what I must know.”

He noticed that her hands had closed.  Her slender fingers were clenched tight.

“I hesitate, because I have almost promised to tell you even more than I told McDowell,” he went on.  “And that will not be pleasant for you to hear.  He killed your father.  There can be no sympathy in your heart for John Keith.  It will not be pleasant for you to hear that I liked the man, and that I am sorry he is dead.”

“Go on—­please.”

Her hands unclasped.  Her fingers lay limp.  Something faded slowly out of her face.  It was as if she had hoped for something, and that hope was dying.  Could it be possible that she had hoped he would say that John Keith was alive?

“Did you know this man?” he asked.

“This John Keith?”

She shook her head.  “No.  I was away at school for many years.  I don’t remember him.”

“But he knew you—­that is, he had seen you,” said Keith.  “He used to talk to me about you in those days when he was helpless and dying.  He said that he was sorry for you, and that only because of you did he ever regret the justice he brought upon your father.  You see I speak his words.  He called it justice.  He never weakened on that point.  You have probably never heard his part of the story.”

“No.”

The one word forced itself from her lips.  She was expecting him to go on, and waited, her eyes never for an instant leaving his face.

He did not repeat the story exactly as he had told it to McDowell.  The facts were the same, but the living fire of his own sympathy and his own conviction were in them now.  He told it purely from Keith’s point of view, and Miriam Kirkstone’s face grew whiter, and her hands grew tense again, as she listened for the first time to Keith’s own version of the tragedy of the room in which they were sitting.  And then he followed Keith up into that land of ice