“The only way!” she exclaimed.  “There was but one way, and I had commanded you to take it.  Do you expect to justify yourself by saying it was the ‘only way’?  To drag me from my mother, to destroy every vestige of confidence I had in you, to make me the most talked-of woman in Europe to-day—­was that the ‘only way’?  What are they doing and saying to-day?  Of what are the newspapers talking under those horrid headlines?  What are the police, the detectives, the gossips doing?  I am the object on which their every thought is centered.  Oh, it is maddening to think of what you, of all people, have heaped upon me!”

She paced the floor like one bereft of reason.  His heart smote him as he saw the anguish he had brought into the soul of the girl he loved better than everything.

“And my poor mother.  What of her?  Have you no pity, no heart?  Don’t you see that it will kill her?  For God’s sake, let me go back to her, Phil!  Be merciful!” she cried.

“She is safe and well, Dorothy; I swear it on my soul.  True, she suffers, but it is better she should suffer now and find joy afterward than to see you suffer for a lifetime.  You would not listen to me when I told you the man you were to marry was a scoundrel.  There was but one way to save you from him and from yourself; there was but one way to save you for myself, and I took it.  I could not and would not give you up to that villain.  I love you, Dorothy; you cannot doubt that, even though you hate me for proving it to you.  Everything have I dared, to save you and to win you—­to make you gladly say some day that you love me.”

Her eyes blazed with scorn.  “Love you?  After what you have done?  Oh, that I could find words to tell you how I hate you!” She stopped in front of him, her white face and gleaming eyes almost on a level with his, and he could not but quail before the bitter loathing that revealed itself so plainly.  Involuntarily his hand went forth in supplication, and the look in his eyes came straight from the depths into which despair had cast him.  If she saw the pain in his face her outraged sensibilities refused to recognize it.

“Dorothy, you—­you—­” he began, but pulled himself together quickly “I did not come in the hope of making you look at things through my eyes.  It is my mission to acknowledge as true, all that Lady Saxondale has told you concerning my culpability.  I alone am guilty of wrong, and I am accountable.  If we are found out, I have planned carefully to protect my friends.  Yet a great deal rests with you.  When the law comes to drag me from this place, its officers will find me alone, with you here as my accuser.  My friends will have escaped.  They are your friends as well as mine.  You will do them thejustice of accusing but me, for I alone am the criminal.”

“You assume a great deal when you d ctate what I am to do and to say, if I have the opportunity.  They are as guilty as you, and without an incentive.  Do you imagine that I shall shield them?  I have no more love for them than I have for you; not half the respect, for you, at least, have been consistent.  Will you answer one question?”