"Before you drive me away again, I have something to tell you," he went on, "something which you must hear. It is a strange story, but you must hear it."
"But tell me," she said; "I cannot understand. You are——"
"I am Radford Leicester. There is no Signor Ricordo, there never was any Signor Ricordo—except in name."
He spoke quite calmly, yet his voice trembled somewhat. Again she looked, and the truth became clearer to her; nevertheless she could not quite understand what had happened.
"Will you not sit down?" he said. "Do not fear; I quite understand your feelings. I will not sit near you. But before I go away I want to tell you something. I want to remove all haunting fear from your mind. Naturally you loathe my presence—as you said long ago; naturally you feel defiled at the thought of my being near you. I quite realise that; you told me so, on our wedding-day, at The Beeches. Still, you will be glad to know what I have to tell you. After that I will go away into the darkness, never to trouble you by my presence again."
"But tell me," she said almost piteously, "I—I am afraid I am ill, and don't understand. But you are Radford—that is, Radford Leicester; and, as for the other——"
"There is no other, there never was any other. He was simply my great lie, the lie by which I wished to work my will. Radford Leicester never died, really died—he only pretended. He practised a fraud, a cruel, unworthy fraud; but he never died. He died to the world, that is all. I have been the Eastern stranger all the time—an Eastern stranger with a strange appearance. I have been that to deceive you. I am going to tell you why; then everything will be plain, and then I will go away again."
He took a few steps across the room, and as he did so she saw the Leicester she had known of olden time, and yet a new Leicester, with a new light in his eyes, and with a ring in his voice she had never heard before. Somehow, she did not know why, but in the dazed state of her mind Ricordo had faded away. As Leicester had said, there was no Signor Ricordo—there never had been such a person.
"I must needs speak of things that are painful to you," he said; "and yet perhaps they will not be. They are painful to me. You remember the day which should have been our wedding-day? You know that I came to you with Winfield. The man Sprague had sent you a letter about me. Well, the letter was true, and yet it was black lies. I tried to explain everything to you, but you would not listen. You know whether you were right in refusing."
He related the story of the wager. He did not spare himself; he only told the bare, unvarnished truth. It was not a pleasant story to tell; but he told it truly, while Olive sat and listened without sign or motion.