"Does it not help you to understand something?"
"Mademoiselle, you ask me a difficult question. I answer it directly, and in spite of the fact that it must pain you, only because of the seriousness of your position. I have never trusted Lucien Bruslart. I believe he has played you false from first to last in this affair. I believe he sent for you to come to Paris; how else could your coming here have been arranged for? Honestly, I have tried to drive these thoughts out of my mind as treacherous and unworthy, but your letter seems only to confirm them. How is it your fees to this scoundrel Legrand have not been paid? How is it your own money has been taken? Bruslart is not in prison. Where is he? Could anything short of locks and bars stop your lover from coming to you?"
He spoke in a low, passionate tone, but his face remained calm, and he made no gesture of anger, of impatience. Watching him, the keenest eyes could not have detected that he was moved in any way.
"My letter must have shown you the doubts in my mind," Jeanne answered quietly. "Since you helped me into Paris at so much risk to yourself, I cannot see that your thoughts could be called unworthy or treacherous."
"For all that, they were. Had you not loved Lucien Bruslart it would have been different."
"Why?"
"That question must remain unanswered, mademoiselle."
Jeanne turned to him for a moment, but Barrington did not look at her.
"I think I know," she said quietly, after a pause. "Some other day I shall ask the question again, monsieur—if we live. I wrote my letter to the one friend I knew I had in Paris; that man is now beside me. I have no fear, Monsieur Barrington, just because you are here. You are risking your life for me, not for the first time. If you fail it means my death as well as yours. I would rather it came that way than any other, and I am not afraid. Tell me your plans."
For a few moments Barrington was silent. "We will not fail," he said suddenly. "I want to laugh and cry out for joy but dare not. I have been in a dream, mademoiselle, while you have been speaking; sitting on a small green mound looking across the bluest waters in the world. I shall tell you about that mound and those waters some day. We shall live, mademoiselle, never doubt that we shall live. My plan is not yet complete, but—"