"No; I've kept on lying--without scruple, without shame."
"Then why do you haul me up?"
"Because it has seemed to me we might, like true companions, work it out a
little together."
This was not strong, he felt, as, pausing with his hands in his pockets, he
stood before her; and he knew it as weaker still after she had looked at
him a minute. "Morris Gedge, I propose to be _your_ true companion, and
I've come here to stay. That's all I've got to say." It was not, however,
for "You had better try yourself and see," she presently added. "Give the
place, give the story away, by so much as a look, and--well, I'd allow you
about nine days. Then you'd see."
He feigned, to gain time, an innocence. "They'd take it so ill?" And then
as she said nothing: "They'd turn and rend me? They'd tear me to pieces?"