"I tell you nothing but what of a certainty and my own knowledge I know. Morphew is nothing to me, you are everything; notwithstanding, your suspicions do him an injustice--he would have saved you in New York had you permitted. But you wouldn't listen to me when I prayed you to accept his offer of intervention . . ."
"That at least one finds easy to believe."
"And even now he would be your friend--yours as well as mine--if you would consent: Morphew stands prepared to save you yet, if we can find a way to slip through their fingers who await you at Nassau."
"The last thing before we sailed, Morphew sent Peter Pagan to promise me, if I could persuade you to go ashore at Nassau and apply to his factors there, the agents who have charge of his bootlegging interests in the Bahamas, he would have us both conveyed secretly to France, in his own yacht."
"Truly?" Lanyard laughed again, flipped his cigarette through the port, and sat up. "How charming of the man--but how strange! Who would ever suspect that rude and unlovely exterior disguised so much goodness and simplicity of heart?"
"You laugh because you do not trust me," Liane sullenly complained. "I have for months devoted myself to you--this is my reward!"
"Prove me ungrateful, my dear," Lanyard lightly offered--"prove me skeptical without sound cause and provocation--and you can ask nothing of me that I will refuse you in testimony to my penitence."
A stare of new intensity enveloped him. He saw her countenance overcast with petulance, an odd frame for eyes of singular wistfulness.
"You are wrong to tempt me with such a promise . . ."
"Why?" Lanyard parried. "Are you afraid of the test? or that I won't make good my word?"
"What makes me hesitate is fear lest you try to make your word good against your will. It's your love I want, Michael, not your duty--another name for hatred!"
"Do you truly believe you'd find me so contemptible, Liane? You should know me better than that."
"I know men better than you do, my dear friend; and when all's said, I know, you are but little different from any other; only, it is my lot to see you different . . ."
"Believe me," Lanyard began in some constraint, "I am not insensible--"
"No! say nothing now. When you have heard me out it shall be for you to say then whether or not I deserve better than mockery from you. But I prophesy you will end by forgetting the fine promise you have just now made . . ."