“Enough!  He knew who you were then?”

“He remembered me when I lifted my veil.  Oh, I know very well that I had not the right to influence your own man to disobey your orders.  But my cause was so pressing and your seclusion seemingly so arbitrary.  How could I dream that your nerves could not bear any sudden shock? or that Bela—­that giant among negroes—­would be so affected by his emotions that he would not see or hear an approaching automobile?  You must not blame me for these tragedies; and you must not blame Bela.  He was torn by conflicting duties, and only yielded because of his great love for the absent.”

“I do not blame Bela.”

Startled, she looked at him with wondering eyes.  There was a brooding despair in his tone which caught at her heart, and for an instant made her feel the full extent of her temerity.  In a vain endeavour to regain her confidence, she falteringly remarked.

“I had listened to what folks said.  I had heard that you would receive nobody; talk to nobody.  Bela was my only resource.”

“Madam, I do not blame you.”

He was scrutinising her keenly and for the first time understandingly.  Whatever her station past or present, she was certainly no ordinary woman, nor was her face without beauty, lit as it was by passion and every ardour of which a loving woman is capable.  No man would be likely to resist it unless his armour were thrice forged.  Would he himself be able to?  He began to experience a cold fear,—­a dread which drew a black veil over the future; a blacker veil than that which had hitherto rested upon it.

But his face showed nothing.  He was master of that yet.  Only his tone.  That silenced her.  She was therefore scarcely surprised when, with a slight change of attitude which brought their faces more closely together, he proceeded, with a piercing intensity not to be withstood: 

“When you entered my house this morning, did you come directly to my room?”

“Yes.  Bela told me just how to reach it.”

“And when you saw me indisposed—­unable, in fact, to greet you—­ what did you do then?”

With the force and meaning of one who takes an oath, she brought her hand, palm downward on the table before her, as she steadily replied: 

“I flew back into the room through which I had come, undecided whether to fly the house or wait for what might happen to you, I had never seen any one in such an attack before, and almost expected to hear you fall forward to the floor.  But when you did not and the silence, which seemed so awful, remained unbroken, I pulled the curtain aside and looked in again.  There was no change in your posture; and, alarmed now for your sake rather than for my own, I did not dare to go till Bela came back.  So I stayed watching.”

“Stayed where?”

“In a dark corner of that same room.  I never left it till the crowd came in.  Then I slid out behind them.”