"And now you are satisfied," she said, looking at Gerard with laughing eyes, as the curtain fell for the last time. "Carmen comes to a bad end. According to your principles! she deserved it."
"Ah, my principles!" he said, smiling. "I'm afraid I don't live up to them very much."
"Don't you?" She gave him a quick, searching glance, as he stood with her cloak in his hand. "I wish I could believe that," she murmured. "I should be a little less—afraid of you."
He placed the cloak about her shoulders. "It is I who am afraid of you," he whispered, bending over her, "and have been ever since I knew you."
Her eyes fell, and she fumbled nervously with the fastening of the cloak. "Ah, you were afraid of me?" she said, under her breath. "And now"—
"Oh, I've grown very brave," he murmured, as he followed her out of the box, "you can't frighten me away any longer." The jesting words lingered in her ear as they left the Opera House.
"Ah, if he knew!" she said to herself, as she sank into her corner of the carriage. "He doesn't know. And yet I told him the exact truth. It's not my fault, if he—misunderstood."
And Gerard meanwhile was telling himself that he understood it all.
"Poor child!" he murmured to himself, as he lit a cigar and sauntered slowly home. "So that was it. Of course, she thought she loved him—the first man she met, and when he turned up felt herself bound—I see it all! And she has suffered—had terrible pangs of conscience over this thing. And I who misjudged her all this time—imagined I don't know what—could I have advised her differently? Surely not. The fellow's not worthy of her. Neither am I. She won't look at me, probably. And yet—one can but try"—