It is I that am ruined!" There was that in his voice she did not understand, for though long used to his paradoxical phrases and his everlasting pose--as it seemed to her and all the world--there now rang through his words a note she had never heard before.

For a fleeting instant she was inclined to catch at some hidden meaning, but her grasp of things was uncertain.

She had been thrown off her balance, or poise, as Charley had, for an unwonted second, been thrown off his pose, and her thought could not pierce beneath the surface.
"I suppose you will be flippant at Judgment Day," she said with a bitter laugh, for it seemed to her a monstrous thing that they should be such an infinite distance apart.
"Why should one be serious then?
There will be no question of an alibi, or evidence for the defence--no cross-examination.

A cut-and-dried verdict!" She ignored his words.

"Shall you be at home to dinner ?" she rejoined coldly, and her eyes wandered out of the window again to that spot across the square where heliotrope and scarlet had met.
"I fancy not," he answered, his eyes turned away also--towards the cupboard containing the liqueur.