"Listen," she said, "I want to tell you something, Laurence. I want you to know that I understand how—how angelic you have been to me all these years. Ever since we first knew one another, you have given me everything—everything in exchange for nothing."
And as he shook his head, she continued, "Yes, for nothing! For a long time I tried to persuade myself that this was not so—I tried to believe that you were as contented as I had taught myself to be. I first realised what a hindrance"—she hesitated for a moment, and then said the two words—"our friendship—must have proved to you four years ago,—when you might have gone to St. Petersburg."
As Vanderlyn allowed an exclamation of surprise to escape him, she went on, "Yes, Laurence, you have never known that I knew of that chance—of that offer. Adèle de Léra heard of it, and told me; she begged me then, oh! so earnestly, to give you up—to let you go."
"It was no business of hers," he muttered, "I never thought for a moment of accepting——"
"—But you would have done so if you had never known me, if we had not been friends?" She looked up at him, hoping, longing, for a quick word of denial.
But Vanderlyn said no such word. Instead, he fell manlike into the trap she had perhaps unwittingly laid for him.
"If I had never known you?" he repeated, "why, Peggy—dearest—my whole life would have been different if I had never known you! Do you really think that I should have been here in Paris, doing what I am now doing—or rather doing nothing—if we had never met?"
The honest, unmeditated answer made her wince, but she went on, as if she had not heard it—
"As you know, I did not take Adèle's advice, but I have never forgotten, Laurence, some of the things she said."
A look which crossed his face caused her to redden, and add hastily, "She's not given to speaking of you—of us; indeed she's not! She never again alluded to the matter; but the other day when I was persuading her,—she required a good deal of persuasion, Laurence—to consent to my plan, I reminded her of all she had said four years ago."