"No, no, do not come near me; do not speak to me—ah, please, stand back, for a moment—please!"
He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and continued, with mock tenderness:
"To think that things come round so! And here you have a home. But that is good. I am tired of much travel and life all alone. The prodigal goes not to the home, the home comes to the prodigal." He stretched up his arms as if with a feeling of content.
"Do you—do you not know," she said, "that—that—"
He interrupted her:
"Do I not know, Lucy, that this is your home? Yes. But is it not all the same? I gave you a home ten years ago—to think, ten years ago! We quarrelled one night, and I left you. Next morning my boat was found below the White Cascade—yes, but that was so stale a trick! It was not worthy of Francois Rives. He would do it so much better now; but he was young then; just a boy, and foolish. Well, sit down, Lucy, it is a long story, and you have much to tell, how much—who knows?" She came slowly forward and said with a painful effort:
"You did a great wrong, Francois. You have killed me.
"Killed you, Lucy, my wife! Pardon! Never in those days did you look so charming as now—never. But the great surprise of seeing your husband, it has made you shy, quite shy. There will be much time now for you to change all that. It is quite pleasant to think on, Lucy. . . . You remember the song we used to sing on the Chaudiere at St. Antoine? See, I have not forgotten it—
"'Nos amants sont en guerre,
Vole, mon coeur, vole.'"
He hummed the lines over and over, watching through his half-shut eyes the torture he was inflicting.