'You would have known no remorse had your secret never been discovered!'
He shrank as from a blow.
'That is not true,' he said wearily. 'But how can I hope you will believe me?'
She answered nothing.
'Once you told me that there was no sin you would not pardon me!' he muttered.
She replied:
'We pardon sin; we do not pardon baseness.'
She paused and put her hand to her heart; then she spoke again in that cold, forced, measured voice, which seemed on his ear as hard and pitiless as the strokes of an iron hammer, beating life out beneath it.
'You will leave Hohenszalras; you will go where you will; you have the revenues of Idrac. Any other financial arrangements that you may wish to make I will direct my lawyers to carry out. If the revenues of Idrac be insufficient to maintain you——'
'Do not insult me—so,' he murmured, with a suffocated sound in his voice, as though some hand were clutching at his throat.