“Yes,” she said, “that is true. I did not dare.” He laughed gaily and started forward to take her; but she put her hand up.
“No,” she said, “you are mistaken. I dared not then, but now I dare. I can meet you now whenever you please, and have no fear at all.”
Duplessis, red in the face, scowled and watched her from under savage brows. “Am I to understand by that that you have ceased to care?”
“You must understand that I do not love you.”
He left the table where he had been sitting and took a turn about the room. Presently he stopped in front of her. His height gave him great advantage.
“I decline to take that answer. I cannot believe that you mean it seriously. I think that you loved me two, nearly three years ago, and that you have loved me of late since last October—some nine months. I know that I have never for a moment ceased to love you. Through your engagement—horrible entanglement as it was—through your years of married life—miserable eclipse—my love has gone on, my need has increased. You know that; you cannot doubt me. It was not my doing that you were false to our love; I couldn’t interfere; it was begun without my suspicion, and all the mischief done before I could get home. After that I did my honest best to get on without you—and then your fool of a husband must drag me in. What next? The inevitable, the undoubted. We two were drawn together: it had to be. And now you ask me to believe that—for no reason at all—it must stop. My dear girl, you can’t swap horses crossing the stream, you know. I decline to be switched off like so much electric current. Who’s the other man?”
This surprising turn to his speech nearly threw her off her pedestal. But she could answer him truthfully.
“There is no question of caprice or of other people at all. The real truth is that I have grown wiser. I know now that I was losing my self-respect by permitting you to love me as you did—in the manner you saw fit to use. It was not love at all—you had got into the habit of considering me as your property, and you could not bear that anybody else should claim a right to me. Directly I saw that, I knew that I couldn’t allow myself to think of you, to be with you—if I was to be—if I could hope to hold up my head.”
He was very angry. “May I know what, or who, enabled you to see this unfortunate aspect of my affairs?”
“I can’t tell you that,” she said. “It came to me suddenly. I think your asking me to meet you in such an extraordinary place had something to do with it.”