"You are afraid," she said. "You are trembling! Lost? You would not say so, if you loved me as I do you. Will you be lost because I am to be your wife, because we shall be free to love in the face of all the world? Lost! Then you have no idea of what I have endured? You don't know, then, that I am tired of suffering, fearing, feigning."
"Such a crime!"
She burst out with a laugh that made him shudder.
"You ought to have said so," said she, with a look full of contempt, "the day you won me from Sauvresy—the day that you stole the wife of this friend who saved your life. Do you think that was a less horrid crime? You knew as well as I did how much my husband loved me, and that he would have preferred to die, rather than lose me thus."
"But he knows nothing, suspects nothing of it."
"You are mistaken; Sauvresy knows all."
"Impossible!"
"All, I tell you—and he has known all since that day when he came home so late from hunting. Don't you remember that I noticed his strange look, and said to you that my husband suspected something? You shrugged your shoulders. Do you forget the steps in the vestibule the night I went to your room? He had been spying on us. Well, do you want a more certain proof? Look at this letter, which I found, crumpled up and wet, in one of his vest pockets."
She showed him the letter which Sauvresy had forcibly taken from Jenny, and he recognized it well.
"It is a fatality," said he, overwhelmed. "But we can separate and break off with each other. Bertha, I can go away."