“Fanchon, that man’s pursuing you—he’s a villain! What has happened? Tell me—I have a right to know!”
Something in his changed tone touched her. She sank back in her chair, covering her face with her hands.
“Mon Dieu!” she murmured brokenly, and then, as her emotions swept her away, she burst into wild and uncontrollable weeping, her sobs shaking her from head to foot.
Something in the passion of her tears, and in the crumpled helplessness of the small figure in the chair, touched William in his turn. He stood looking at her without moving, thinking unhappily. He had made a mess of it; but after all it wasn’t all her fault. It was his, and he still loved her. From what he had suffered to-night he knew that he loved her. Suddenly he bent over the small, writhing figure and spoke.
“Tell me, Fanchon,” he said hoarsely. “Must I thrash that villain?”
Very slowly she raised her head, very slowly and reluctantly she raised her tear-drenched eyes to his.
“I—I didn’t go with him, I didn’t want to see him—he followed me.” She hesitated, trembling. “I don’t know how to tell you. He overtook me and he made me come back. I’d lost my way. He made me go back to the inn—we ate dinner together.”
“You dined at a public road-house with that man—a man I wouldn’t ask to my father’s house?”
She nodded, biting her lips.
For a moment he was hot with rage; but he curbed it. He wanted to be just, and he was deeply moved. As she sat there she looked as she had looked once in Paris, when he had first seen her—a butterfly of a creature fighting to live, fighting hopelessly in the midst of glittering, sordid surroundings. He hadn’t been blinded, his eyes had been wide open, but he had fallen in love with her; and he had been moved, too, by compassion. He had snatched her out of that gay, hollow sham of a life, and he had meant to save her, to keep her safe. Yet, as she sat there now, she looked forlorn and helpless and beset.