"Well, why didn't you say so at first?" snapped Myrna. She turned again furiously on Paul Valmain. "You hear, Monsieur Valmain! You are well acquainted with Father Anton. Go to him, if you have any doubts. You have only to know now how Father Anton obtained them"—her words were curling, biting, stinging like a whiplash in their bitter scorn. "Well, listen! I and a few of my friends have become charitable since father established his fund. It is contagious, Monsieur Valmain! We, too, give bounteously to Father Anton for distribution amongst the poor—we give our discarded garments! I sent him that hat and cloak in a bundle with some other things, a few days ago. Is it quite plain, Monsieur Valmain? Are you satisfied? Well, then"—she swung an outstretched arm toward the door—"go!"
"But, mademoiselle—pour l'amour de Dieu!" he protested brokenly. "Do you not see that I am in agony, in torment for what I have done, that—"
"Go!" she raged—and stamped with her foot upon the floor again.
For a moment he stood lurching a little on his feet, as though he had been struck a blow; and then, white-faced, he drew himself up and bowed to her.
"As you will, mademoiselle!" he said in a low voice, and walked past her toward the door.
Myrna Bliss turned to watch him—and halfway across the room halted him.
"Wait!"—she pointed to the rapiers lying on the floor. "Take those things with you! And one word more, Monsieur Valmain! I do not intend to pose in Paris in the abandoned rôle you were so quick to cast me for. You perhaps understand that! I do not propose that anything shall be known of what has happened here to-night. I shall see to it that nothing is said by the others, but a word of this from you, Monsieur Valmain, or from Monsieur LeFair, who Monsieur Vinailles tells me was acting as your second, and—"
"Mademoiselle might have spared me that!" he said monotonously—and, picking up the rapiers, walked on through the salon and out into the hall.
In a sort of miserably fascinated way Marie-Louise had followed him with her eyes. She heard the outer door close behind him—and then mechanically she rose to her feet, as Myrna Bliss came and stood before her.
"So"—Myrna's voice was quivering, tense with passion—"so it remained for Monsieur Valmain to discover the secret of the wonderful, beautiful, entrancing model! Monsieur Valmain is right, of course. I knew it at once, the moment I heard him say so. I was not very clever, I suppose, or I should have seen it for myself long ago; only—you quite understand this of course—I had forgotten, utterly forgotten, that you even existed! But it seems that Jean could not live without his little peasant; nor the little peasant without Jean! It is perfectly comprehensible now why there should have been such secrecy about his model. And so you have been living with Jean, have you, ever since he came to Paris? The naïve, innocent little ingénue of Bernay-sur-Mer!"