"You dare say that to me?"
Alexina raised her low curved eyebrows. She seldom raised them but when she did she looked like all her grandmothers.
"Dare? Did you expect me to lie? Is that what you wish?"
Gora clutched her muff hard against her throat. (Alexina wondered if she had a pistol in it.) Her eyes looked over it pale and terrible. Alexina had the advantage of her in apparent calm, but there was no sign of confusion in those wide baleful irises with their infinitesimal pupils.
"You knew that I loved him. That I had loved him for twelve years."
"I knew nothing of the sort. You had his picture on your mantel and you corresponded with him off and on but you never gave me a hint that you loved him. Twelve years! Good heaven! A friendship extending over such a period was conceivable; natural enough. But a romance! When such an idea did cross my mind I dismissed it as fantastic. You always seemed to me the embodiment of common sense."
"There is no such thing. It is true—that I hardly believed it then—admitted it. But I knew we should meet again. He never had married. It looked like destiny when I did meet him. I nursed him—"
She paused and her eyes grew sharp and watchful, Alexina's face showed no understanding and she went on, still watching.
"I nursed him back to life. Through a part of his convalescence. A woman knows certain things. He almost loved me then. If we could have been alone he would have found out—asked me to marry him. We should be married to-day. If I could have seen him constantly in London it would have been the same." She burst out violently: "I believe you wrote to him to come to Paris."
"My dear Gora! Keep your imagination for your fiction. I had forgotten his existence until I saw him, for a few seconds, at a reception. Don't forget that he came to Paris under orders from his Government."