"
Her brilliant teeth closed on her lower lip with a snap, and she
stood looking at him, breathing so hard that the sound was almost a
sob.
"What do you mean?" she whispered hoarsely.
He raised his shoulders in polite surprise at her dulness of
comprehension.
"In the unfortunate circumstances in which you are placed," he
explained, "it seems to me that the least one can do is to offer
every assistance in one's power. Please consider me hors de
concours. In a word--I scratch."
She gasped like a swimmer swimming for life. She was fighting for
that which some deem dearer than life--namely, her love. For it is
not only the good women who love, though these understand it best
and see farther into it.
"Then you can never have cared for me," she cried. "All that you
have told me," and her eyes flashed triumphantly across Oscard, "all
that you promised and vowed was utterly false--if you turn against
me at the first word of a man who was carried away by his own vanity
into thinking things that he had no business to think."
If Guy Oscard was no great adept at wordy warfare, he was at all
events strong in his reception of punishment. He stood upright and
quiescent, betraying by neither sign nor movement that her words
could hurt him.
"I beg to suggest again," said Jack composedly, "that Oscard has not
yet brought any accusations against you.
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