“I mean that you’ll be sorry.”
He stood imploringly before her. “I want to say something worse—something more outrageous. If you don’t understand this you’ll be perfectly justified in ordering me out of the house.”
She answered him with a glance of divination. “I shall understand—but you’ll be sorry.”
“I must take my chance of that.” He moved away and tossed the books about the table. Then he swung round and faced her. “Does Flamel care for you?” he asked.
Her flush deepened, but she still looked at him without anger. “What would be the use?” she said with a note of sadness.
“Ah, I didn’t ask that,” he penitently murmured.
“Well, then—”
To this adjuration he made no response beyond that of gazing at her with an eye which seemed now to view her as a mere factor in an immense redistribution of meanings.
“I insulted Flamel to-day. I let him see that I suspected him of having told you. I hated him because he knew about the letters.”
He caught the spreading horror of her eyes, and for an instant he had to grapple with the new temptation they lit up. Then he said, with an effort—“Don’t blame him—he’s impeccable. He helped me to get them published; but I lied to him too; I pretended they were written to another man... a man who was dead....”