After a moment he turned his head. His pallor was accentuated almost to ghastliness in the moonlight. "I cannot very well do so. I told my cousin when I wrote about the enquiry that whether I were cleared or no I should not come back, and that I hoped she would continue to make Sessignes her home. I should not trouble her."
Laurent was now terribly bothered. What was the right thing to do? "Oh, but don't you think——" he began, and then floundered desperately. "Aymar, I think I ought to tell you . . . yet I don't know whether I had better . . . I . . . I really wish you would advise me whether to tell you . . ." and unconscious of the absurdity he was uttering, he caught hold of Aymar's coat, which lay on the window-seat, and began to wring a button round and round.
A little smile dawned on Aymar's mouth as he looked at his occupation. "Better tell me . . . before you have them all off!"
"I . . . I talked to Mme de Villecresne after you left. I . . . I had no choice—I had to make things clear. She . . . she had not understood, Aymar—she really had not."
"Sometimes," said Aymar very slowly, and dropping out each word separately, "I have hoped that, since."
"Yes," responded Laurent eagerly. "You see, when you explained to her there was so little time—it was so sudden . . . all so horrible and you never do yourself justice. . . . So I—she asked me, you know, and I could not go away like that, before she did understand—I explained."
"So you explained," repeated his friend. "That was . . . like you, Laurent." He put his hand abruptly to his throat, got up with equal abruptness, and walked away out of the wash of moonlight.
He had told him! Now that Aymar knew that she knew the truth—now, surely. . . .
Aymar reappeared with startling suddenness, like a ghost.
"Hadn't we better go to bed?" he said in a dry voice.