I hanged him.' Clarice was stunned by the words, and the more because of the dull, seemingly callous accent with which they were spoken.
'You hanged him!' she whispered, dropping the words one by one, as though she was striving to weigh them.
'Yes.

I have been blamed for it,' he replied with no change of voice.
'People said I was damaging the prestige of the white man.

The argument bothered me, I confess, but I think they were wrong.

I should have damaged that prestige infinitely more if I had punished him secretly or--' 'Oh, don't!' she cried, with a sharp interruption, and she stared at him with eyes dilating in horror, almost in fear.

'You can discuss it like that,--the man I had been engaged to,--you hanged him!' She ended with a moan of actual pain and covered her face with her hands.
On the instant Drake woke to a full comprehension of all that he had said, and understood something of the humiliation which it meant to her.
Clarice was sitting huddled in her chair, her fingers pressed lightly on her eyes, while now and again a shiver shot through her frame.
'Still I was bound to tell her,' Drake thought.