"You admit it, then!" she cried, looking at her companion steadily, a world of scorn in her face. "I never thought such a thing possible--that you would let your jealousy get the better of you like this!" She paused, and hurled the taunt she knew would hurt him most. "You are the last person on earth I would have selected to become a dog in the manger!"
Ben did not stir, although the brown of his sun-tanned face went white.
"I looked for that," he said simply.
Florence's brown eyes widened in wonder--and in something more--something she did not understand. Her heart was beating more wildly than before. She felt her self-control slipping from her grasp, like a rope through her hands.
"There seems nothing more to be said, then," she said, "except that I will not go."
Even yet Blair did not move.
"You will go. The carriage comes in ten minutes," he reiterated calmly.
The small figure stiffened, the dainty chin tilted in the air.
"I defy you to tell me how you can force me to go!"
It was the supreme moment, but Benjamin Blair showed no trace of excitement or of passion. His folded arms remained passive across his chest.
"Florence Baker, did I ever lie to you?"
The girl's lip trembled. She knew now what to expect.
"No," she said.
"You are quite sure?"
"Yes, I am quite sure."
"Did I ever say I would do anything that I did not do?"
The girl had an all but irrepressible desire to cry out, to cover her face like a child. A flash of anger at her inability to maintain her self-control swept over her.
"No," she admitted. "I never knew you to break your word."
"Very well, then," still no haste, no anger,--only the relentless calm which was infinitely more terrible than either. "I will tell you why of your own choice you will go with me. It is because you value the life of Clarence Sidwell; because, as surely as I have not lied to you or to any human being in the past, there is no power on earth that can otherwise keep me away from him an hour longer."
Realization came instantaneously to Florence Baker and blotted out self-consciousness. The nervous tension vanished as fog before the sun.
"You would not do it," she said, very steadily. "You could not do it!"
Ben Blair said not a word.
"You could not," repeated the girl swiftly; "could not, because you--love me!"
One of the man's hands loosened in an unconscious gesture.
"Don't repeat that, please, or trust in it," he answered. "You misled me once, but you can't mislead me again. It is because I love you that I will do what I said."