“My first thought was a great thankfulness,” she said, simply.  “A thankfulness that you—­that no man—­could ever understand.”

XXXIII

As she finished speaking Eve did not lower her eyes.  To her there was no suggestion of shame in her thoughts or her words; but to Loder, watching and listening, there was a perilous meaning contained in both.

“Thankfulness?” he repeated, slowly.  From his newly stirred sense of responsibility pity and sympathy were gradually rising.  He had never seen Eve as he saw her now, and his vision was all the clearer for the long oblivion.  With a poignant sense of compassion and remorse, the knowledge of her youth came to him—­the youth that some women preserve in the midst of the world, when circumstances have permitted them to see much but to experience little.

“Thankfulness?” he said again, incredulously.

A slight smile touched her lips.  “Yes,” she answered, softly.  “Thankfulness that my trust had been rightly placed.”

She spoke simply and confidently, but the words struck Loder more sharply than any accusation.  With a heavy sense of bitterness and renunciation he moved slowly forward.

“Eve,” he said, very gently, “you don’t know what you say.”

She had lowered her eyes as he came towards her; now again she lifted them in a swift, upward glance.  For the first time since he had entered the room a slight look of personal doubt and uneasiness showed in her face.  “Why?” she said.  “I—­I don’t understand.”

For a moment he answered nothing.  He had found his first explanation overwhelming; now suddenly it seemed to him that his present difficulty was more impossible to surmount.  “I came here to-night to tell you something,” he began, at last, “but so far I have only said half—­”

“Half?”

“Yes, half.”  He repeated the word quickly, avoiding the question in her eyes.  Then, conscious of the need for explanation, he plunged into rapid speech.

“A fraud like mine,” he said, “has only one safeguard, one justification—­a boundless audacity.  Once shake that audacity and the whole motive power crumbles.  It was to make the audacity impossible—­to tell you the truth and make it impossible—­that I came to-night.  The fact that you already knew made the telling easier—­but it altered nothing.”

Eve raised her head, but he went resolutely on.

“To-night,” he said, “I have seen into my own life, into my own mind, and my ideas have been very roughly shaken into new places.