He hesitated, fingering his fork, and appearing to reflect.
"I said I'd talk straight with you," he added, "and I will. There was only one person whose opinion made any difference to me, and I felt I could trust her all through. I dodged the question when you spoke of it, back there, but of course you were right. It was somebody's business—Margery Palffy's. I'd been as good as engaged to her for a year—that is, she knew and I knew—and it never dawned upon me that she was going to think anything except—well, that! You see, I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, and I went to her, as bold as brass, that last night when we were all at Poissy, and asked her definitely. You can imagine how I felt when she came back at me with—I don't need to tell you what she said. It was the same old business that other people had been hinting at, but it was straight from the shoulder, and showed me that she thought I was as unworthy of her as a man could well be—as unworthy of her as I am now! It was the worst kind of a facer. It drove me mad, Radwalader—I want you to remember, all the time, that I didn't deserve it—and I flung away from her, with every drop of my damnable pride at the boiling-point, and came back to Paris, and—to the inevitable. For three weeks I've been living in heaven—and in hell!"
"In heaven," said Radwalader quietly, "because of Mirabelle; and in hell because of—"
"That's it—because of Margery Palffy! Try to understand me. If I thought I loved her before, I know it now. If it were possible to go back—but it isn't—it's never possible to do that. It's too late, that's all there is about it."
Radwalader smiled easily. The cards were running his way now.
"Surely, you're not tied up as tight as that," he said. "You've been a trifle hot-headed, yes; but in all you've told me, there's nothing more than what a vast majority of the men you know have done, and nothing more than what a vast majority of women have forgiven and forgotten. It's never too late to mend. Cut loose, my dear Vane—cut loose from Mirabelle, and go back to the girl you really care for. You'll have to deny a few things, of course, and swallow some humiliation; but don't get tragic over it. In affairs like this, the first course is humble-pie, but the pièce de résistance is invariably fatted calf!"
"Cut loose from Mirabelle," repeated Andrew. "Cut loose from Mirabelle?"
"Obviously. There's one infallible way, my friend."
Radwalader raised his right hand lightly, and chafed with his thumb the tips of his first and second fingers.