"Jean! Jean!" she said brokenly—and turned away her head, and, leaning there, buried it in her arms. When she looked up again her face was wet with tears.
He held out his arms to her, and smiled.
But now again she shook her head; and, as her lips quivered, gently pushed his arms away, and took one hand of his in both her own.
"Jean, it is not too late," she was trying bravely to control her voice. "You must go back. The bon Dieu has given you a great life to live, and a great work to do—the work you love."
"It was not the work that I loved—it was Jean Laparde," he said, with a bitter laugh. "But now, I tell you again, Jean Laparde is dead."
"There is your life and there is your work," she went on, as though she had not heard him. "And, Jean—Jean, I have seen them both, and—and so I know."
"You have seen them!" he repeated in a puzzled way. "What is that you say?"
"Yes," she said. "Jean, it was I who went to your studio that night. It was I that Monsieur Valmain saw enter there. I had a cloak and hat that Father Anton had given me that had belonged to Mademoiselle Bliss."
"You?" he cried out, in wild amazement.
"Wait!" she said tensely. "It does not matter if you know now, since you have seen me here; and I am telling you because—because I must make you understand that I know what your life is there in the great world, and how the name of Jean Laparde is honoured, and how now, more than ever before, Jean, you belong to France—and that you must go back—and that this can never, never be, Jean—and that I can never let you do this thing."