I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but— not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine.
She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv— —"
I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman—at thirty- five—knows it all—himself. And he had better go and cut his throat than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep she cannot retrace."
Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured, "I will retrace it."
"I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it. Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we'll not do that, but as soon as I get into the house I'll burn it."
"I can trust you," she replied, "but——"
"What; the Baron—when he misses it? O I'll settle that."
She gave a start as though I had shouted.
I thought it a bad sign for the future, and the words that followed seemed to me worse. "Isn't it my duty," she asked—and her eyes betrayed unconsciously the desperateness of her desire—"to explain to him myself?"
I answered with a question. "Would that be in the line of retracement,
Mrs. Fontenette?"