At length she began to speak of commonplace matters.
"Guess who has called," she said, with a little smile.
"I give it up," I said, with a smile as artificial as her own.
"Mrs. Sullivan Smith. She and Sullivan Smith are on their way home from Bayreuth; they are at the Hôtel du Rhin. She wanted to know all about what happened in the Rue Thiers, and to save trouble I told her. She stayed a long time. There have been a lot of callers. I am very tired. I—I expected you earlier. But you are not listening."
I was not. I was debating whether or not to show her Alresca's letter. I decided to do so, and I handed it to her there and then.
"Read that," I murmured.
She read it in silence, and then looked at me. Her tender eyes were filled with tears. I cast away all my resolutions of prudence, of wariness, before that gaze. Seizing her in my arms, I kissed her again and again.
"I have always suspected—what—what Alresca says," she murmured.
"But you love me?" I cried passionately.
"Do you need to be told, my poor Carl?" she replied, with the most exquisite melancholy.