"Is _this_ love ... for me ... to become the wife of another man? ... Helena, what are you saying?"
She did not speak; only her hard breathing told how much she suffered.
"Then think of the other man! His wife! When a woman becomes a man’s wife they are one. And to marry a man in order to ... to ... Oh, it is impossible! I cannot believe it of you, Helena."
Suddenly, without warning, she burst into tears, for something in the tone of his voice rather than the strength of his words had made her feel the shame of the position she occupied in his eyes.
After a moment she recovered herself, and, in wild anger at her own weakness, she flamed out at him, saying that if she was Ishmael’s wife it was in name only, that if she had married Ishmael it was only as a matter of form, at best a betrothal, in order to meet his own wish and to make it possible for her to go on with her purpose.
"As for love ... _our_ love ... it is not _I_ who have been false to it. No, never for one single moment ... although ... in spite of everything ... for even when you were gone ... when you had abandoned me ... in the hour of my trouble, too ... and I had lost all hope of you ... I——"
"Then why, Helena? You hated Ishmael and wished to put him down while you thought he was coming between you and me. But why ... when all seemed to be over between us——"
Her lips were twitching and her eyes were ablaze.
"You ask me why I wished to punish him?" she said. "Very well, I will tell you. Because—" she paused, hesitated, breathed hard, and then said, "because _he killed my father_."
Gordon gasped, his face became distorted, his lips grew pale, he tried to speak but could only stammer out broken exclamations.
"Oh, you may not believe it, but I _know_," said Helena.
And then, with a rush of emotion, in a torrent of hot words, she told him how Ishmael Ameer had been the last man seen in her father’s company; how she had seen them together and they were quarrelling; how her father had been found dead a few minutes after Ishmael had left him; how _she_ had found him; how other evidence gave proof, abundant proof, that violence, as a contributory means at least, had been the cause of her father’s death; and how the authorities knew this perfectly, but were afraid, in the absence of conclusive evidence, to risk a charge against one whom the people in their blindness worshipped.