Daniel finished his coffee, pensively. The tale, and especially its ending, had a sound of stark and terrible truth about it.
“Then what happened?” he asked.
“Oh, then I was a good girl for half a year, perhaps; but presently when another man made the love to me, I say to myself: ‘If once, then why not twice?’ He was a soldier, big, very strong like you.” She looked at him closely. “Yes, he were very like you; and I thought in my heart, ‘I love him because he is so brave, and I am like a little bird in his hands.’” She laughed. “Oh, I knew he was a man à bonne fortunes. He had many girls; but in love all women are like the Orientals, is it not?—and I was content to have my day, like the new one in the harîm of the Egyptian pasha here....”
Daniel suddenly clenched the fingers of his hand which rested upon the table. Muriel’s words came into his mind: “You can put me in your harîm if you want to.” They rang in his ears again, and his heart seemed to stand still in fear.
The murmur of Lizette’s voice continued, and he listened in terror now as she told of her second love.
“Then one night,” she was saying, “we walked together on the road by the sea, the Chemin de la Corniche, you know; and the beautiful stars were in the sky, and there were little lights across the water on the islands of Ratonneau and Pomegne. And I was so tired, and I sat down on the rocks by the sea, and we were all alone....”
Daniel stopped her with a sudden movement of his hand. “I know, I know,” he said. “Don’t tell me!”
“O, I soon forgot my love,” she laughed, thinking that the intensity with which he spoke denoted his concern for her sorrows. “A few months, a few weeks, perhaps, and it was finish. Then some one else, and some one else, and some one else....”
He rose from the table, sick at heart. “I must be going,” he said. “If you will accept my offer, write to me at the Residency, and I’ll send you the money for you to go to your brother.”
She looked at his troubled face with a question in her eyes. “I think you not like me,” she sighed. “I think you have the disgust.”