Declining would have protected that belief forever.

Going was the only way to end it, all at once, in front of every person whose good opinion he had traded me away to earn.

I was not walking into his trap.

I was walking into the one room on earth where the truth would do the most work.

He thought he had summoned a defeated woman to his stage.

He had, in fact, subpoenaed his own reckoning, addressed it himself, and paid for the catering.