It relieved him for the moment from coming to any decision.

He thanked Charles with effusion, and then--his natural impulsiveness quickened by the quantity of raw spirits he had swallowed, by this mark of sympathy, by the moonlight, by Heaven knows what that loosens the facile tongue of unreticence--then suddenly, without a moment's preparation, he began to pour forth his troubles into Charles's astonished and reluctant ears.

It was vain to try to stop him, and, after the first moment of instinctive recoil, Charles was seized by a burning curiosity to know all where he already knew so much, to put an end to this racking suspense.
"And that is not the worst," said Dare, when he had recounted how the woman he had seen on the church steps was in very deed the wife she claimed to be.

"That is not the worst.

I love another.