"And so," he said, "you don't love me any longer?" It had taken him some time to grasp this fact, which still seemed to him incomprehensible.
"No," she said, in a low, determined voice, "I don't love you any longer. I don't know if I—ever did. I was so young, I had never seen any men, I didn't know what I was doing. You flattered me; it was interesting, romantic. But if I had loved you, really loved you"—she stopped for an instant. "If I had really loved you," she repeated "do you think I could have hesitated—that day at Cranston? Do you think I could have let you go—without me? Why, I should have followed you—don't you see that I would?—to the end of the world." The color rushed into her face, there was a ring in her voice that he never heard before—no, not even in those early days, when she had sat at his feet, and worshipped him as a genius. Then, as he looked at her, he realized for the first time that he had lost her. The discovery was, for many reasons, unwelcome.
"Well, if you didn't love me," he said, hoarsely, "you certainly made me believe that you did. Elizabeth, you have treated me abominably. I didn't wish to leave you—do me the justice to admit that—it was your own doing entirely."
"I know it." She bent her head submissively. "I don't blame you for anything; not even for—forgetting me."
"I didn't forget you," he interrupted her, flushing hotly, and repeating assertions which she had heard already, and interpreted by that knowledge of his character, which she had acquired too late to be of value. She put them aside now with a gesture of weariness.
"What's the use," she said, "of going over that again, I have said already, I don't reproach you. We can't either of us—can we?—afford to throw stones. And yet, if you had not stopped writing"—She paused for a moment with knitted brows, as she seemed to weigh one possibility against another, in a sort of inward trial of her own conduct. An instinctive mental honesty, however, carried the day. "I don't know that that would have made any difference," she said. "I was very unhappy because you—had forgotten me, and that made me want to come to town, all the more; but—if I had been happy, and sure that you loved me, I should have come, I think, all the same. And no matter how I had felt, or what I had done, I should have known, sooner or later—oh, I couldn't but realize it—what a—what a terrible mistake we had made." She put out her hands in a sudden, despairing gesture, which hurt his vanity.
"Elizabeth, do you really mean that?"
"Yes," she said, in a low, monotonous voice, and staring straight before her with hard, hopeless eyes. "Yes, I mean it. I have been realizing it, little by little, all these months. And yet I put it away—I wouldn't think of it—till one day it forced itself upon me. I knew, all at once, that I—I dreaded your coming back, I hoped you never would—it was when I was enjoying myself, when I was thinking how delightful life was. And then, after that, the fear of your coming was always there—I could never get rid of it for any length of time, till just for a while—yesterday"—Her voice faltered, and for the first time the softening tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh, I can't help it," she cried out, "if I'm hard. When I think how happy I was—wildly, absurdly happy, just for a little while, and then to think how—how miserable I am now."
She stopped, half strangled with her sobs, and Paul sat staring at her in moody silence. He was clear-sighted enough now to grasp the truth. Such violent grief, he told himself, could have but one explanation. There was, there must be, some other man.
Yet the conviction made him only the more determined not to give her up. True, there had been a time, not long before, when he would have done so only too gladly; when he would have welcomed an opportunity to free himself from an irksome bond, which he regretted quite as much as she did. But now, since his return, when he heard her spoken of everywhere as one of the beauties of the season, when he saw her in D'Hauteville's studio in her velvet and furs, her whole appearance redolent of grace and charm, and that nameless distinction which Gerard had noticed, and which impressed the young musician even more deeply; when he saw her thus a hundred times more desirable, his fickle heart succumbed anew, with a sudden throb of joy, at the thought of the secret tie between them. She was his, this young princess, whom he had chosen when she was a mere Cinderella; he had but to hold out his hand and she would come to him. For he never doubted that she would come. Her first coldness he had looked upon as mere girlish pique at his neglect, a proof of her affection. Now, a sadder and a wiser being, he had learned that the privilege of forgetfulness is not confined to men alone.