“Do you detest me as much as that?”
“Yes.”
“More than you detest Marescal?”
“Yes.”
“More than you detest William and that ruffian at the Villa Faradoni?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
“But they were harming you and without me who protected you——”
She was silent; she had picked up her hat and was holding it across the lower part of her face so that he could not see her lips. Her attitude was explained by that concealment; Ralph had not a doubt of it. If she detested him, it was not because he had been the witness of all the crimes and infamies that had been committed, but because he had held her in his arms and kissed her lips. A strange modesty in a girl like her; yet it was so sincere and threw such a light on the very recesses of her soul and her instincts that, in spite of himself, he murmured:
“I beg you to forget it.” [[123]]
Then drawing back a few steps to show her that she was free to depart, he continued in a tone of involuntary respect: