He sank back in his
chair, sick at heart, and a painful silence fell.
"If I refuse," Surface took up the theme, "it is for your sake as well
as mine. My boy, you don't know what you ask. It is charity, mere mad
charity to people whom I have no love for, who--"
"Then," said Queed, "two things must happen. First, I must lay the facts
before Miss Weyland."
Surface's manner changed; his eyes became unpleasant.
"You are not serious. You can hardly mean to repeat to anybody what I
have told you in sacred confidence."
Queed smiled sadly. "No, you have not told me anything in confidence.
You have never told me anything until I first found it out for myself,
and then only because denial was useless."
"When I told you my story last June, you assured me--"
"However, you have just admitted that what you told me last June was not
the truth."
Again their eyes clashed, and Surface, whose face was slowly losing all
its color, even the sallowness, found no sign of yielding in those of
the younger man.
Queed resumed: "However, I do not mean that I shall tell her who you
are, unless you yourself compel me to.
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