He looked away, chin in hand, his glance thoughtful, disturbed, almost wistful.
“There is,” he said slowly, musingly, “a singular fatality at work between that man and me, bringing us ever each by turns athwart the other’s path...”
He sighed; then swung to face her again, speaking more briskly: “Mademoiselle, until this moment I had no knowledge—no suspicion of this thing. But...” He broke off, considered, and then shrugged. “If I wronged him, I did so unconsciously. It would be unjust to blame me, surely. In all our actions it must be the intention alone that counts.”
“But does it make no difference?”
“None that I can discern, mademoiselle. It gives me no justification to withdraw from that to which I am irrevocably committed. No justification, indeed, could ever be greater than my concern for the pain it must occasion my good friend, your uncle, and perhaps yourself, mademoiselle.”
She rose suddenly, squarely confronting him, desperate now, driven to play the only card upon which she thought she might count.
“Monsieur,” she said, “you did me the honour to-day to speak in certain terms; to... to allude to certain hopes with which you honour me.”
He looked at her almost in fear. In silence, not daring to speak, he waited for her to continue.
“I... I... Will you please to understand, monsieur, that if you persist in this matter, if... unless you can break this engagement of yours to-morrow morning in the Bois, you are not to presume to mention this subject to me again, or, indeed, ever again to approach me.”
To put the matter in this negative way was as far as she could possibly go. It was for him to make the positive proposal to which she had thus thrown wide the door.