As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on:
"I said it was an ideal. Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for you kept me, in spite of everything—and I fancy you know in my profession what that means—good."
Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near her father's mill.
"I've been so horribly afraid that when you did come there might be heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on myself, awfully!"
She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked.
"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew. It seems awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood it herself—"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose it is easier for me than for most women."
Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in here:
"But this—this man?"
"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years. He has loved me ever since I first made my début and he follows me everywhere like a dog. I have never looked at any of them, until this week."
With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired of my romantic folly. I was ill and nervous and could not play any more, and that was dreadful. So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this spring, I gave him a sort of promise. I told him that I was going to Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and that I would send him word."