But this! Oh, why did you tell me ?' She took her hands from beneath her chin and clenched them with a convulsive movement upon her knees.

Her memory had gone back to the days when she and Gorley had been engaged, to their meetings, their intimate conversations.

This man, in whose hand her hands had lain, whose lips had pressed hers, been pressed by hers, this man had been convicted of a double crime--dastardly murder and dastardly theft--and punished for it! Her pride cried out against her knowledge, and cried out against the man who had vouchsafed the knowledge.
'Why did you tell me ?' she repeated, and the words were an accusation.
'You wished to know,' he replied doggedly, 'and it seemed to me that you had the right to know.' 'Right!' she exclaimed, 'right! What right had I to know?
What right had you to tell me ?' She rose to her feet suddenly as she spoke and confronted Drake.

He looked into her eyes steadily, but with a certain perplexity.
'I felt bound to tell you,' he said simply, and his simplicity appealed to her by its frank recognition of an obligation to her.
'Why,' she asked herself, 'why did he feel bound?
Merely because I wished to know the truth of the matter, or because he himself was implicated in it as the instrument of Gorley's punishment ?' Either reason was sufficient to appease her.

She inclined to the latter; there were conclusions to be inferred from it which staunched her wounded pride.
Clarice turned away.