arder than her hardest word, though more words followed in broken
whispers.

"It wasn't because I cared ... that you hurt me as you did. I never did
care for him ... like that. It was ... because ... you seemed to think
my society contamination ... to an honest boy. I did care for him, but
not like that. I cared too much for him to let him marry me ... to
contaminate him for life!"

I repudiated the reiterated word with all my might. I had never used it,
even in my thoughts; it had never once occurred to me in connection with
her. Had I not shown as much? Had I behaved as though I feared
contamination for myself? I rapped out these questions with undue
triumph, in my heat, only to perceive their second edge as it cut me to
the quick.

"But you were playing a part," retorted Mrs. Lascelles. "You don't deny
it. Are you proud of it, that you rub it in? Or are you going to begin
denying it now?"

Unfortunately, that was impossible. Tt was too late for denials. But,
driven into my last corner, as it seemed, I relapsed for the moment into
thought, and my thoughts took the form of a rapid retrospect of all the
hours that this angry woman and I had spent together. I was introduced
to her again by poor Bob. I recognised her again by the light of a
match, and accosted her next morning in the strong sunshine. We went for
our first walk together. We sat together on the green ledge overlooking
the glaciers, and first she talked about herself, and then we both
talked about Bob, and then Bob appeared in the flesh and gave me my
disastrous idea. Then there was the day on the Findelen that we had all
three spent together. Then there was the walk home from early church
(short as it had been), the subsequent expedition to Zermatt and back,
with its bright beginning and its clouded end. Up to that point, at all
events, they had been happy hours, so many of them unburdened by a
single thought of Bob Evers and his folly, not one of them haunted by
the usual sense of a part that is played. I almost wondered as I
realised this. I supposed it would be no use attempting to express
myself to Mrs. Lascelles, but I felt I must say something before I went,
so I said:

"I deny nothing, and I'm proud of nothing, but neither am I quite so
ashamed as perhaps I ought to be. Shall I tell you why, Mrs. Lascelles?
It may have been an insolent and an infamous part, as you imply; but I
enjoyed playing it, and I used often to forget it was a part at all.