“Forgive me!” he cried; “oh, forgive me!”
The few steps between them might have been a myriad of miles.
“I did love you—long ago,” she said; “but you never thought of me. You did not understand me then—nor afterward. All this winter my love has been dying a hard death. You tried to keep it alive, but—you did not understand. You only humiliated and tortured me—And I knew that if I had loved you more, you would have loved me less. See!” holding up her thin hand, “I have been worn out in the struggle between my unhappiness and remorse and you.”
“You do not know what love is!” he burst forth, stung into swift resentment.
A quick sob broke from her.
“Yes I do.” she answered. “I—I have seen it”
“You mean M. Villefort!” he cried in desperate jealous misery. “You think that he——”
She pointed to the scattered fragments of the letter.
“He had that in his pocket when he fell,” she said, “He thought that I had read it. If I had been your wife, and you had thought so, would you have thought that I was worth trying to save—as he tried to save me?”
“What!” he exclaimed, shamefacedly. “Has he seen it?”