“Why are you grateful to me?”
“Ah! Why? In the first place you might have made us miss the next boat, mightn’t you? . . . I don’t thank you for your hospitality. You can’t be angry with me for saying that I am truly thankful to escape from it. But I am grateful to you for what you have done, and—for being what you are.”
It was difficult to define the flavour of that speech, but Renouard received it with an austerely equivocal smile. The professor stepping into the boat opened his parasol and sat down in the stern-sheets waiting for the ladies. No sound of human voice broke the fresh silence of the morning while they walked the broad path, Miss Moorsom a little in advance of her aunt.
When she came abreast of him Renouard raised his head.
“Good-bye, Mr. Renouard,” she said in a low voice, meaning to pass on; but there was such a look of entreaty in the blue gleam of his sunken eyes that after an imperceptible hesitation she laid her hand, which was ungloved, in his extended palm.
“Will you condescend to remember me?” he asked, while an emotion with which she was angry made her pale cheeks flush and her black eyes sparkle.
“This is a strange request for you to make,” she said, exaggerating the coldness of her tone.
“Is it? Impudent perhaps. Yet I am not so guilty as you think; and bear in mind that to me you can never make reparation.”
“Reparation? To you! It is you who can offer me no reparation for the offence against my feelings—and my person; for what reparation can be adequate for your odious and ridiculous plot so scornful in its implication, so humiliating to my pride. No! I don’t want to remember you.”
Unexpectedly, with a tightening grip, he pulled her nearer to him, and looking into her eyes with fearless despair—