I _may_ excuse myself to you. I will not
be too proud to meet you half-way; but remember, when you tell the story to
him, everything is to be sacrificed to his cure."
"When we really love them," Mrs. Thorne unexpectedly argued, "do we want
them to be cured?"
The defendant looked at her in astonishment, "Do I understand you?" she
asked. "You must be careful. I have not told you my story. Of course I want
to influence you, but nothing can alter the facts."
There was no reply, and she took up her theme again with visible and
painful effort. A sickening familiarity, a weariness of it all before she
had begun, showed in her voice and in her pale, reluctant smile.
"Seven years is a long time," she said, looking at Thorne. "Are you sure
you have forgotten nothing? You saw what the man was?" she demanded. "He
was precisely what he looked to be--one of the men about the stables. I was
not supposed to know one from another.
"It is a mistake to talk of a girl having fallen. She has crawled down in
her thoughts, a step at a time--unless she fell in the dark; and I declare
that before this happened it was almost dark with me!
"My mother is a very clever woman; she has had the means to carry out her
theories, and I am her only child (Norwood Benedet is my half-brother).
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