"In Italy——?" His voice sank to a muffled whisper, but he did not take his eyes, his suffering, sunken eyes, from Wantele's tortured face.
Still the other did not—could not—speak.
"I knew it. At least I felt sure of it." He sighed a quick convulsive sigh, and then in mercy averted his eyes.
"But never here?" he muttered questioningly. "Everything was over by the time we came back here?"
"Yes, Richard. I swear it."
"I knew that too—at least I felt sure of it. I'm afraid you must have suffered a good bit, Dick?"
The younger man nodded his head. "I have loathed and I have despised myself ever since."
"I'm sorry you did that. I'm sorry I waited till now to tell you that I knew, that I understood."
"How you must have hated me!" said Wantele sombrely.
"Never, Dick. I—I knew her by then. If you had been the first"—he quickly amended his phrase—"if I had been fool enough to believe you were the first, I think it would have killed me. As it was," his voice hardened, "it only made me curse myself for my blind folly—folly which brought wretchedness and shame on you, Dick, and—and now, I fear, on Jane Oglander"—he saw the confirmation he sought on the other's face. "It's about Jane I wish to speak to you to-night. For a moment I ask of you to think of me as God——"