“Not if it is a comfort,” she said, with her great eyes fixed upon him, and her delicate lip quivering. “But—are there not grave reasons for your desire to remain unknown? I cannot but suspect it and fear it. You look so worn, and changed from what you were!...”
“I am changed, as you say,” returned Dunoisse, “but the change is not altogether due to long sickness and close imprisonment——”
“Can it be possible?... You have really been a prisoner?” she asked, looking at him strangely; and he replied:
“I have been confined in a military fortress of Northern France for the last six months.”
“I dreamed it!”
The words had broken from her despite her will to stay them. To Dunoisse the utterance brought revival of life and hope. He drew nearer, and said, with deep, vibrating earnestness:
“Miss Merling, I was imprisoned without trial, for no crime, but for a desperate effort to retrieve a great wrong that I had done—at the instance of my superiors, unknowingly.... Should you hear ill of me, do not judge me!—do not condemn me!—try to believe that I have told you the very truth!”
“I do believe you!”
The words, softly spoken, conveyed unfaltering sincerity. He looked his gratitude, and said, in broken tones:
“You have no time to listen to the story now, but when you are free, you will hear me tell it?” He added, as she bent her head in assent: “And until then I will do what service I may in the Hospital. Years back, had I listened to you, I should have plucked myself from the morass of vanity and sensuality in which I was slowly, surely sinking. But I had gone too far to draw back. So I took, and spent, that money I had vowed never to touch, and leagued with rogues to put myself upon the throne of Widinitz, and was repaid, and richly, in disgrace and failure. You see, I hide nothing from you! Even in my days of blindness, you were for me the ideal of a woman, noble and pure, disinterested and true!”