“Monsieur, I must remind you,” she said instantly, “that there is no reason why I should give explanations.”
“Wait. I can’t talk to you like this,” I broke in. “Yesterday—good heavens, where is yesterday?—yesterday I knew you. Only yesterday, we were happy as two children, exploring the world, hand in hand: to-day you come to me and face me as though I were an enemy! You speak to me behind this mask of a veil! You ask me something utterly incomprehensible and, at my first dazed question, you—but what have I done—why, why should you take this way with me?”
She raised her arms instantly and drew back her veil.
“You are not an enemy, Monsieur Littledale.”
When I looked at her I was so shocked by the pallor of her face and the dark stricken eyes that I cried involuntarily:
“I have made you suffer like that!”
“It is right that I should suffer,” she said bravely, though her lips trembled a bit, “for I have done wrong in even permitting you to speak to me.”
“Why? What wrong?” I said desperately. “What wrong is there in our friendship? I have never said a word to you, Mademoiselle, that could not be said before a third person. I never shall. Leave it as it is. Keep me in your life—as a friend, only.”
She shook her head, and her eyes never wavered from mine.
“You make it very hard for me. Yet, because I feel that what has happened is my fault, I must say things that it is very hard for a woman to say. Mon ami, I shall not disguise from you that, had I the right, your devotion would mean to me the greatest happiness in the world. Let us not play with a situation that is too serious for half-truths. What might be cannot be. I tell you this, and after what I have told you, my friend, without concealment, I ask you to believe without further question.”