"You know? You know?"
"I know everything that you don't. I can answer all your questions. Ask me what you like."
But Véronique dared not put the great question to her, the one which was beginning to quiver in the darkness of her consciousness. She was afraid of a truth which was perhaps not inconceivable, a truth of which she seemed to catch a faint glimpse; and she stammered, in mournful accents:
"I don't understand, I don't understand . . . . Why should my father have behaved like that? Why should he wish himself and my poor child to be thought dead?"
"Your father had sworn to have his revenge."
"On Vorski, yes; but surely not on me, his daughter? . . . . And such a revenge!"
"You loved your husband. Once you were in his power, instead of running away from him, you consented to marry him. Besides, the insult was a public one. And you know what your father was, with his violent, vindictive temperament and his rather . . . his rather unbalanced nature, to use his own expression."
"But since then?"
"Since then! Since then! He felt remorseful as he grew older, what with his affection for the child . . . and he tried everywhere to find you. The journeys I have taken, beginning with my journey to the Carmelites at Chartres! But you had left long ago . . . and where for? Where were you to be found?"
"You could have advertised in the newspapers."