“Then I regret, madame,” I responded.
“If you really regret,” she answered, “then your love for her is not altogether dead.”
She spoke the truth. At this point I may as well confide to you, my reader, the fact that I still regarded my charming little friend of those careless days of buoyant youth with a feeling very nearly akin to love. I recollected the painful circumstances which led to our parting. My memory drifted back to that well-remembered, breathless summer’s evening when, while walking with her along the white highway near her home, I charged her with friendliness towards a man whose reputation in Brussels was none of the best; of her tearful protests, of my all-consuming jealousy, of her subsequent dignity, and of our parting. After that I had applied to the Foreign Office to be transferred, and a month later found myself in Rome.
Perhaps, after all, my jealousy might have been utterly unfounded. Sometimes I had thought I had treated her harshly, for, truth to tell, I had never obtained absolute proof that this man was more than a mere acquaintance. Indeed, I think it was this fact, or just a slight twinge of conscience, that caused a suspicion of the old love I once bore her to remain within me. It was not just to Edith—that I knew; yet notwithstanding the denunciations of both Kaye and Anderson, I could not altogether crush her from my heart. To wholly forget the woman for whom one has entertained the grand passion is often most difficult, sometimes, indeed, impossible of accomplishment. Visions of some sweet face with its pouting and ready lips will arise, constantly keeping the past ever present, and recalling a day one would fain forget. Thus it was with me—just as it has been with thousands of others.
“No,” I admitted truthfully and honestly at last, “my love for Yolande is perhaps not altogether dead.”
“Then you will render me a service?” she cried quickly. “Say that you will—for her sake!—for the sake of the great love you once bore her!”
“Of what nature is this service you desire?” I asked, determined to act with caution, for the startling stories I had heard had aroused within me considerable suspicion.
“I desire your silence regarding an absolute secret,” she answered in a hoarse half-whisper.
“What secret?”
“A secret concerning Yolande,” she responded. “Will you, for her sake, render us assistance, and at the same time preserve absolute secrecy as to what you may see or learn here to-day?”