“The truth which I suspected without daring to admit it.”
“What truth?” he repeated, in a louder voice.
“The truth about your treason.”
“You’re mad. I’ve committed no treason.”
“Oh, don’t juggle with words! I confess that I don’t know the whole truth: I did not understand all that those men said or what they were demanding of you. But the secret which they tried to force from you was a treasonable secret.”
“A man can only commit treason against his country,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m not a Frenchman.”
“You were a Frenchman!” she cried. “You asked to be one and you became one. You married me, a Frenchwoman, and you live in France and you’ve made your fortune in France. It’s France that you’re betraying.”
“Don’t talk nonsense! And for whose benefit?”
“I don’t know that, either. For months, for years indeed, the colonel, Bournef, all your former accomplices and yourself have been engaged on an enormous work—yes, enormous, it’s their own word—and now it appears that you are fighting over the profits of the common enterprise and the others accuse you of pocketing those profits for yourself alone and of keeping a secret that doesn’t belong to you. So that I seem to see something dirtier and more hateful even than treachery, something worthy of a common pickpocket. . . .”
The man struck the arm of his chair with his fist: