“Good morning, Madam Guiscardini,” said Paul Desfrayne, folding his arms, as if to prepare himself for a stormy interview.
“Did you come here to seek me, Paul Desfrayne?” she inquired, regarding him with a baleful light in her splendid eyes, defiance in every tone and gesture.
“To seek you!” bitterly repeated the young man. “I would go to the end of the world to avoid you—you who——”
“Come. It is a long time since we have met, and we may be interrupted at any moment. If you have anything to say to me, I am willing to go home now, and either wait for you, or let you precede me. We have not met since——”
“Since our wedding-morning,” Paul Desfrayne said, as she paused. “Not for three years. I suppose you have never seen me from that day until this moment?”
“I have never seen or heard of you,” she angrily retorted, her eyes flashing ominously with premonitory lightning. “I did not wish to see you. I did not care to hear of you. I never asked a question about you. I should not care if we never met again; and I should be glad—thankful to hear you were dead.”
“I thank you,” said Paul Desfrayne, again lifting his hat. “If care, if regret, if bitter self-reproaches could have killed, I should not have troubled you to-day. It was, indeed, by no voluntary movement that I happened to see you this afternoon. But I believe I must have sought you ere long, to make some endeavor to arrive at a state of things somewhat less wearying, somewhat less wretched. My life is becoming a burden almost too heavy to be borne.”
“You can see me any day you please to appoint,” Madam Guiscardini said angrily. “I have no desire either to seek or to avoid you. But I do not see what good can come of talking. Nothing can undo what has been done; nothing could roll back the waves of that pitiless time that has swept over you and over me.”
“It remains to be seen what can be done, Madam Guiscardini,” Captain Desfrayne answered, moving quite close to her, and looking intently into her eyes. “Do you happen ever to have seen, heard of, or personally known, a man of the name of Gilardoni?”
The color faded completely from the cheeks, lips, almost from the eyes, of the beautiful prima donna.