"There was no thief," he said quietly. "There was a man delirious with drink who imagined one. There was you with the bruises on your throat and the unutterable misery in your eyes and a little rifle in your hands. There was no one else."
She ceased to argue; she sat looking straight in front of her with a stubborn face and a resolution to cling at all costs to her chance of happiness.
"Come, Stella," Thresk pleaded. "I don't say tell every one. I do say tell him. For unless you do I must."
"You?" she said. "You would tell him that you came back into the tent and saw me?"
"Oh, much more--that I lied at the trial, that the story which secured your acquittal was false, that I made it up to save you. That I told it again this afternoon to give you a chance of slipping out from an impossible position."
She looked at Thresk for a moment in terror. Then her expression changed. A wave of relief swept over her; she laughed in Thresk's face.
"You are trying to frighten me," she said. "Only I know you. Do you realise what it would mean to you if it were ever really known that you had lied at the trial?"
"And you would run the risk of the truth becoming known by telling it to so much as one person. No, no! Another, perhaps--not you! You have had one dream all your life--to rise out of obscurity, to get on in the world, to hold the high positions. Everything and every one has been sacrificed to its fulfilment. Oh, who should know better than I?" and she struck her hands together sharply as she uttered that bitter cry. "You have lain down late and risen early, and you have got on. Well, are you the man to throw away all this work and success now that they touch fulfilment? You are in the chariot. Will you step down and run tied to the wheels? Will you stand up and say, 'There was a trial. I perjured myself'? No. Another, perhaps. Not you, Henry."
Thresk had no answer to that indictment. All of it was true except its inference, and it was no news to him. He made no effort to defend himself.
"You are not very generous, Stella," he replied gently. "For if I lied, I saved you by the lie."
Stella was softened by the words. Her voice lost its hardness, she reached out her hand in an apology and laid it on his arm.