The President heard a muffled groan behind him where his guest was sitting, but he did not take; his eyes off the woman's face.
"I had wronged him, I admit, but I was sorry—and hated myself for my fault. I begged his pardon—begged for it on my knees! And he told me to go—threw me out into the streets! Me! His wife—the mother of his child!
"Thanks to him I rolled in the gutter! Thanks to him I have suffered a thousand deaths—and I have killed! I hate him! I hate him!" she cried wildly, her voice shaking with passion. "And with my last breath I will curse his name!"
She paused with a gasp and swallowed hard. Floriot sat with his face in his hands and his heaving shoulders told the story of his agony. Rose and Helene, their heads close together, were openly crying, and there were sounds of sobbing and snuffling from all over the room. The jury sat; like twelve men hypnotized. Raymond stood looking up into her face, while a hundred emotions swept him. The feeling of pity, the desire to comfort, that had moved him when she pressed his hand, returned with reawakened force. He could not know it—but she dared not glance down at him.
"And yet I do not complain," she went on, with a strange note of tenderness. "No, I do not complain! I have a son—a son whom I love, whom I love more than I can say!"
Once more she paused, and when she spoke again some of the excitement under which she had labored returned.
"But he does not know me!" she cried. "The sound of my voice—thank God!—can awaken no echo in his heart! He will never see me again—know nothing of my shame and," she faltered, "his memory of me will be vague and sweet and beautiful; for—when I became—lost to him—he was a child! He is so far—from me—now! But I love him! I worship him! All my heart is his. My one wish—is that he—should be happy—that—ah!"
The words ended in a long-drawn sob and she sank into her chair, huddled over the desk.