She broke off suddenly and then continued after a while:
"It would be hypocritical for me to express any grief at Guy Vernon's death, and, whatever I am, I am not a hypocrite--except to my father. I love him, for I can love, and he is the one person I really fear--except you."
As she spoke she leaned forward again, and, closing her fan, almost laid the tip of it upon Sir Percy's hand, outstretched on the arm of his chair. In another instant it would have been a caress, but Sir Percy coolly moved his hand and Mrs. Vernon quickly withdrew the fan.
"General Talbott is a man very much to be feared as well as loved," was his answer. "Whenever the memory comes to me of what I owe him and how I repaid him I feel like shooting myself."
"But we were very happy in that time," murmured Alicia, leaning back and letting her hands fall in her lap as she watched the fire.
Sir Percy rose and Alicia Vernon rose too.
"You know very well," she said, showing some agitation, "why I came here. I wanted to see you. I am a fool, of course--every woman is about some man. I have tried to forget you, I have been trying to do that for twelve years, but I have not yet succeeded. Do you remember those tragic stories of the Middle Ages, when a woman who loved a man would dress herself as a page and follow him to the Crusades? Such are the women who knew how to love; not those conventional creatures who sit by the fire and to whom one man is the same as another."
As she spoke her eyes filled and two large bright tears dropped upon her cheeks, and she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes with a trembling hand. Sir Percy had meant to be stern with her, but no man, if he be a man, can be stern to a woman in tears. He remained silent for a minute or two, moved, in spite of himself, at Alicia Vernon's emotion.
"Alicia," he said, and then paused. It was the first time he had called her by her name for years, and as he spoke her eyes lighted up and a sad smile played about her mouth. "I, least of all human beings, can reproach you. I am willing to take upon myself all the guilt, all the shame, of that bygone time, but it was guilt and shame, and let us not deceive ourselves."
"Was it guilt and shame?" she asked in her thrilling voice. "Was it rather not fate? I was married at twenty to a worthless wretch. I was formed to love and be loved, and I found myself tied to a creature like Guy Vernon. Then I met in you the man for whom I was meant and I came into my own. At least I was disinterested, for then you were both poor and obscure. I never had one regret for anything that happened. Do you suppose that Marguerite Gautier regretted, even when she was dying, that she had loved Armand? I always go, when I can, to hear that opera, La Vie de Bohème. Mimi's death is really a triumph of love. Let me tell you this: no woman who ever loved ever regretted it. If she regretted it she did not love. Men feel and act differently about these things. You know you loved me once and you have seemed to hate me ever since, but love will prevail--it will yet prevail."