“Ah, what made you do that?” Frances said.
Strangely in that moment, deeply as his words concerned her, it was not of herself she thought, but of the man before her, with his drawn, haggard face in which cynicism struggled to veil suffering.
“I don’t know why you did that,” she said. “It was not necessary. It was not wise.”
“It was—fair play,” he said, and still with set lips he smiled. “I did more than that, and I shall do more still—unless you relieve me of the obligation.”
“What do you mean?” she said. “What can you mean?”
A growing sense of uneasiness possessed her. Did he know Arthur Dermot’s nature? Was it not madness to dare again that tornado of fury from which she had so strenuously fought to deliver him? It had not been an easy thing, that deliverance. She had sacrificed everything to accomplish it, and now he had refuted all. “I think you must be mad,” she said. “Tell me what you mean!”
The bitter lines deepened about his mouth. “I will tell you,” he said, “and once more seek the refuge of your generous protection. I told him that I should go to-day to Fordestown, and from Fordestown I would meet him at the Stones at any hour that he cared to appoint, to give him such further satisfaction as he might wish to demand.”
“Montague!” The name broke from her, little accustomed as she was to utter it. “Are you really mad?” she said. “Are you quite, quite mad?”
“But—but he will kill you if you meet again!”
She gasped the words breathlessly. This thing must be stopped. At all costs it must be stopped.
He was still smiling in that odd, drawn way. She did not understand his look. He raised his shoulders at her words.
“Oh, you mustn’t go!” she said. “It would be madness—madness.”
“You have?” She stared at him. “What is it? Quick! Tell me!”
He pulled a telegram from his pocket and gave it to her. She opened it with shaking hands. Three words only—brief, characteristic, uncompromising! “_To-night at ten._” No signature of any sort—only the bald reply!
She gazed at it in silence. And before her inward sight there rose a vision of the man himself as she had seen him last, terrible in his wrath, overwhelming in his condemnation. Yet her heart leapt to the vision. He was the man she loved.