"It needs no explanation," interrupted Sandow. "I have seen what you have been guilty of, and you will not try to deny the evidence of my own eyes. I always thought you frivolous, but not so dishonourable, but that you have, almost under the eyes of Jessie, your promised bride"--
"Frank, stop there!" cried Gustave, with such determination that Sandow, although trembling with rage, was silent. "I cannot allow this, my self-sacrifice will not go so far as that. Frida, come to me. You see that we must speak. He must learn the truth."
Frida obeyed. She came to his side, and he laid his arm protectingly round her. Sandow looked bewildered from one to the other. The affair was unintelligible to him, he had clearly no presentiment of the truth.
"You wrong me by your accusations," said Gustave, "and you wrong Frida too. If I kissed her I had a right to do so. She has been my charge from her earliest youth. The poor forsaken child was neglected by everyone who ought to have protected and sheltered her. I was the only one who recognised the right of kindred. I have used that right, and can support my actions by it."
It was astonishing how deeply earnest the voice of the irrepressible jester had become. At the first words a terrible presentiment seemed to seize Sandow. Every tinge of colour left his face, he became paler and paler, and with his eyes fixed on Frida, he repeated in a tuneless and mechanical voice--
"Your right of kindred? What--what do you mean?"
Gustave raised the head of the girl, which leant on his shoulder, and turned the face full towards his brother.
"If you have not yet guessed, then read it in this face, perhaps it will now be clear to you. What likeness is it that you have remembered there. I have certainly deceived you, been forced to deceive you since you thrust every possibility of an understanding from you. Then I seized the only means, and brought Frida to you. I thought you would by degrees learn to comprehend the feeling which warmed your half-frozen heart, I thought it must at last dawn upon you, that the stranger who attracted you so powerfully had a right to your love. That is now impossible, the discovery has come too suddenly and unexpectedly, but look at those features, they are your own. For long years you have suffered under a dark and gloomy illusion, and have punished a guiltless child for the guilt of the mother. You awake at last and open your arms to her--to your own, your neglected child."
A long oppressive silence followed these words. Sandow staggered, and for a moment it seemed as if he would give way altogether, but he stood upright. His face worked terribly, and his breast rose and fell quickly with the gasping breath, but he spoke no word.
"Come, Frida!" said Gustave gently, "come to your father, you see he waits for you."