Why did he ask her that? She forgot the sea and glanced at him, but he was looking at the waves.
She answered as she would have answered in any case. “I would rather have Roland. He is a charming boy . . . I was already fond of him at Mirabel.” If Gaston meant to tell her without being asked, which was her great hope, she would make it as easy as possible for him. She paused, and went on lightly, “Mme de la Vergne, however, might prefer her own son. As for Marthe . . . well, I know Roland’s mind at least on that matter.”
Her husband stopped in his walk. “Valentine,” he said, turning his head towards her, “I have something to tell you about Roland.”
She stopped too, and loosed his arm. For a moment her heart seemed to pause also. He had paled a little, his voice was very grave and not free from difficulty, but he did not try to escape her gaze. On the contrary he looked straight at her.
(“I have something to tell you about Roland!” echoed the waves, laughing.)
And then Valentine de Trélan knew that she wanted to spare him the explicit avowal, because she saw how much it would cost him to utter to her face what was, by implication, an insult to her—though an insult twenty years old.
“I guessed it, Gaston,” she said, very quietly. “But I hoped that you would tell me. It is right that I should know . . . but I want to learn nothing further . . . I only wished it not to lie, unspoken, between us. . . . Now we need never speak of it again, save as it affects the boy himself.”
“I hate that you should know it,” he said with emotion. “And yet I hated even more to keep you in ignorance. I thought, too, that you might guess, and that was worse . . . Valentine, Valentine, I cannot wish it undone, because I love him . . . but if only I need not have given you this pain!”
Yet he was suffering more than she; she knew that. Once again, as in the arbour this morning, it came to her as strange that she should feel it so little. And, only eager for the moment to allay the deep distress in his eyes and voice, she put her hands on his arm. “It does not pain me now, Gaston. No, no, believe me! I am speaking the truth! It is so long ago, in that other life which we have forgotten. Why remember it now, in this?”
He caught her hands and raised them to his lips. “Generous! generous!” he murmured. “Why must I choose to-day to wound you so?”