I wear no mask off the stage." Even as she spoke the hasty words she seemed to realize their full import, to read his doubt of their truth revealed within his eyes.
"Then," he said slowly, weighing each word as though life depended on the proper choice, "there is nothing being concealed from me?
Nothing between you and this Farnham beyond what I already know ?" She stood clinging to the door, with colorless cheeks, and parted lips, her form quivering.

This was when she had intended to speak in all bravery, to pour forth the whole miserable story, trusting to this man for mercy.

But, O God, she could not; the words choked in her throat, the very breath seemed to strangle her.
"That--that is something different," she managed to gasp desperately.
"It--it belongs to the past; it cannot be helped now." "Yet you came here to warn me against him ?" "Yes." "How did you chance to learn that my life was threatened ?" She uplifted her eyes to his for just one instant, her face like marble.
"He told me." "What?
Farnham himself?
You have been with him ?" She bowed, a half-stifled sob shaking her body, which at any other time would have caused him to pause in sympathy.

Now it was merely a new spur to his awakened suspicion.

He had no thought of sparing her.
"Where?
Did he call upon you at the hotel ?" She threw back her shoulders in indignation at his tone of censure.
"I met him, after the performance, in a private box at the Gayety, last evening," she replied more calmly.