“You are quite right,” he returned, with a strange calming of the passion that had seemed to rage within him. “Your reproach had more justice in it than you, possibly, imagine. I should have been the last man to accuse you even by innuendo. But I was desperate, a cripple, helpless and, at that time, hopeless. My love made me mad with jealousy, and it is the curse of jealousy that it can be cruel even to the thing it loves. To think that a feather of my own disabled wing had plumed the shaft that had struck my heart—yes, Alexia, I must have been mad, or I could never have breathed a suggestion against the woman whom I love beyond the power of all words to tell.”
“And whose offence, whose provocation in your eyes are that she can never return the feeling,” she said with quiet firmness.
He bowed his head, strangely submissive. “I do not despair,” he replied, in a low voice. “I cannot. Despair would mean death, and life is strong within me; only less strong than my love. That I have laid at your feet, only to be accepted with hate and distrust. I will prove my sincerity. I will put the other, my life, into your keeping. Then you will have all I have, since, with my love, my very soul and spirit are yours. Alexia, I give my life into your hands.”
He paused; and the silence lasted till she was forced to ask, with a suggestion of incredulity, “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he answered deliberately, “that I am going to prove the sincerity of my love for you by entrusting you with a secret on which my life may depend. You must believe in me, when I confide to you alone of all the world that Captain Martindale met his death at my hand.”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE END OF THE INTERVIEW
THE declaration, although no news to Alexia, was, coming as it did, startlingly unexpected. It was, moreover, as she instinctively realized, a cunning move which forced her into an embarrassing position. But she gave no sign that she was already aware of the crucial fact. “Yours?” she exclaimed in a tone of horror which was not altogether affected. “You killed Captain Martindale?”
Gastineau nodded. His face bore a look almost of sympathetic amusement at her concern. “By what was practically an accident,” he answered; “although it might be hard to prove that. It is due to myself now to tell you exactly how it happened. Do sit down,” he continued, with an easy smile, as he pushed a chair towards her. “You need not be afraid of me; on the contrary, it is I who might fear you.”
He moved away from her chair, and she sat down.
“Of course,” he began, “you remember the night of the Vaux House ball, and, perhaps, what had passed between us just before. I will not inflict upon you a description of my state of mind at that time, except to say that I was mad for love of you. I have nothing if not strength of will, yet it all shrivelled to naught where you were concerned; strive as I would, I could not overcome the love which tortured me a million times more than, as I felt to my shame and grief, it troubled and offended you.”