Presently he stole a look at her. She had passed to one of the windows, and, having seated herself, was employed upon some needle-work. Her attitude, the lines of her figure, the pose of her head, presented the same abnormal maddening resemblance to his wife; and slowly, as if fascinated, he moved nearer to her.
"Pardon me," he said at last, speaking almost in a whisper. "You are very like your sister, mademoiselle."
She glanced quickly at him, her face wearing the hard, sharp look that had slowly grown upon it. But she gave him no other answer.
He felt that he ought to leave her, but the spell was upon him and he lingered.
"You have been ill, I fear," he said, after a long silence.
"Monsieur is right," she answered briefly. "The times are such that few of us escape. Those are perhaps most happy," and as she paused on the word she looked up at him, "who die with their beliefs unshattered, before discovering the clay feet of their idols."
He started.
"Mademoiselle!" he cried almost fiercely, carried away by an intensely painful thought. "My wife! Your sister? Answer me, answer me quickly, I beg of you. They did not—they did not tell her that I—that I refused——"
"That monsieur declined to save her?" Mademoiselle Claire answered slowly, her great dark eyes looking into vacancy—into the depths of gloomy memories. "Yes, they did. A woman, perhaps, would not have done it; would not have borne to do it. But men are cruel—cruel! And after all it helped her to die, you understand. It made it more easy."
He walked to the other end of the room, his face hidden in his hands. And there his frame began to be racked by deep sobs. He tried to summon up his pride, his courage, his manliness; but in vain. The thought that the woman who had loved and trusted him, his young wife—his young wife of a few months only—had died believing him a coward and an ingrate was too bitter! Too bitter, the conviction that, mistaken as her belief was, it could never be altered! Never be altered! She would never know!