"Do you care to know," he asked her, "what my business in Paris was?"
"If you wish to tell me!"
"Lucia! do not I wish to tell you everything? Could I have kept a secret which was always in my thoughts from you, do you suppose?"
Lucia half rose. "That is not generous," she said. "You have no right to speak so. Yesterday you were kinder."
"Yesterday I only thought of you. To-day I have had time to think a little of myself."
"No doubt you are right. Only you ought not to have come to Paris—at least not to us. It would have been better if everything that belonged to our old life had been lost together."
"Which means that you are quite willing to lose me?"
"Willing? No. But I can understand that it is better."
"Can you? You talk of losses—listen to what I have lost. You know what my life in Canada used to be—plenty of work, and not much money—but still reasonable hope of prosperity by-and-by. I used to make plans then, of having a home of my own, and I was not content that it should be just like other people's. I thought it would be the brightest, warmest, happiest home in the world. I knew it would be if I only got what I wanted. A man can't have a home without a wife. I knew where my wife was to be found if ever I had one at all; and she was so sweet and good, and let me see so frankly that she liked and trusted me, that I—it was all vanity, Lucia—I never much doubted that in time I should make her love me."
He stopped. Lucia was looking at him eagerly. Even yet she did not quite understand. "Go on," she said.