She grew a little paler, but she did not withdraw her hands.
With smarting recollection Gaston remembered how, back there in the old life, two small hands had slipped from his at a like confession.
"I've been a weak fellow from the start, Joyce. I haven't even had the courage to do a big, bad thing for myself. I've let them I loved, use me. I've lost my idea of right in my depraved craving for appreciation. That sort of sin is the worst kind. It damns one's self and makes the one you've tried to serve, hate you."
He saw that she was trying to follow him, but could not clearly, so he dropped all but brutal facts.
"When I stepped off the train at St. Angé, a few years back, I took the name of Gaston, because I dared not speak my own name, and I didn't like to go by the number that I had been known by for—five years."
"Number?" she whispered, and her frightened eyes glanced about. She was not afraid of him, but for him. Gaston saw that.
"Never fear," he reassured her; "it was all worked out. I paid that debt, but I wanted to forget the transaction. I thought I could, up here—but I reckoned without you!"
"Go on," she said hoarsely. The clock struck eleven, the logs fell apart—she was in a hurry.
"You know there is an odd little couplet that used to please me when I was—paying up. It goes like this:
Two men looked out of the prison bars,
The one saw mud, the other, the stars.