"Adrea, you talk like a child," he said sternly. "I made no such insinuation as you suggest! You know that I did not! Sit down!"
She obeyed him; the quick change in his manner had startled her, and taken her at a disadvantage. She felt the force of his superior will, and she yielded to it.
He leaned over her chair, and his voice grew softer. "Adrea, you are very, very unjust to me," he said. "Do you wish to make me so unhappy, I wonder? For a week I have been thinking of scarcely anything else save our last parting, and now if I had not stopped you, almost by force, you would have left me again in anger."
His tone had grown almost tender, and, as though unconsciously, his hand had rested upon her gleaming coils of dark, braided hair. She looked up at him, and in the firelight he could see that her eyes were soft and dim.
"You have really thought of me?" she said in a low tone. "You have really been unhappy on my account?"
"I have!" he admitted. "Very unhappy!"
Something in his tone—in the reluctance with which he made the admission, angered her. She moved a little further away, and her voice grew harder.
"Yes; you have been unhappy!" she said. "And why? It was because you were ashamed to find yourself thinking of me; you, Paul de Vaux, a citizen of the world and a man of culture, thinking of a poor dancing girl with only her looks to recommend her! That was where the sting lay! That was what reddened your cheek! You men! You are as selfish as devils!"
She stamped her foot; her voice was shaking with passion. Paul stood before her with a deep flush on his pale cheeks, silent, like a man suddenly accused. Her words were not altogether true, but they were winged with, at any rate, the semblance of truth.