The tidy young negress opened the door soon afterwards. Pauline asked for Mrs. Dares. The answer came that Mrs. Dares was at home.
"I wish to see her alone," said Pauline.
"Miss Cora's got a gent'man in the back room," came the answer, "but there's nobody right here."
Between "right here" and the "back room," Pauline was soon shown the difference. As she sat in a little prettily-furnished apartment, awaiting the appearance of Mrs. Dares, she readily apprehended that some sort of a chamber lay behind. This was, reasonably, the Dareses' dining-room. But she heard voices from beyond the rough decorative woollen tapestry which intervened in heavy concealing folds.
At first, seated quietly and thinking of just what she should say to Mrs. Dares, Pauline quite disregarded these voices.
"I shall tell the plain, unvarnished truth," she reflected. "I shall not leave a single detail. I shall trust her judgment absolutely."
A moment later she started, with a recognizing sense that she had heard a familiar tone from one of the voices behind the tapestry. Evidently a man was speaking. She rose from her seat. She had approached the curtain instinctively before realizing her act. A new impulse made her withdraw several steps from it. But the voice had been Kindelon's, and she now clearly heard Kindelon speak again.
"Cora!" she heard him say, "there are certain wrongs for which no reparations can be given. I know that the wrong I have done you is of this sort. I don't attempt to exculpate myself. I don't know why I came here to bid you this farewell. It was kind of you to consent to see me. Hundreds of other women would have refused, under like conditions. But you have often said that you loved me, and I suppose you love me still. For this reason you may find some sort of consolation hereafter in the thought that I have made an ambitious marriage which will place me high in the esteem of the world, which will give my talents a brilliant chance, which will cause men and women to point to me as a man who has achieved a fine and proud success.... Good-by, Cora.... Let me take your hand once—just once—before I go. I'll grant you that I've behaved like a scamp. I'll grant everything that can be said in my own disfavor. Good heavens! don't look at me in that horribly reproachful way, you—you make me willing to renounce this marriage wholly! Cora, I will do so if you'll pardon the past! I'll come back to you, I'll devote my future life to you! only tell me that you forgive and forget!"
"No, no," Pauline now heard a struggling and seemingly agonized voice reply. "There is no undoing what you have done. Keep your promise to her, as you have broken your faith with me. I do not say that my love is dead yet; I think it will not die for a long time ... perhaps not for years. But my respect is wholly dead.... I will not touch your hand; I will not even remain longer in your presence. I—I have no vengeful feeling toward you. I wish you all future happiness. If you shine hereafter as your talents deserve, I shall hear of your fame, your triumph, with no shadow of bitterness in my soul. And my chief hope, my chief anxiety, will be for the woman whom you have married. I know her enough to know that she is full of good impulses, full of true and fine instincts. You will go to her with an aching conscience and a stained honor. But I pray that after she has lifted you into that place which you seek to gain through her, she may never know you as I have known you—never wake to my anguish of disappointment—never realize my depths of disillusion!"
Pauline waited to hear no more. She thrust aside the drapery of the doorway and passed into the next room.