“Too late!” I cried. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I have said. You have come back to me when it is too late.”
“You speak in enigmas, Yolande. Why not be more explicit?”
Her pale lips trembled, her eyes were brimming with tears, her chilly hand quivered in mine. She did not speak for some moments, but at last said in a low, tremulous voice half choked by emotion:
“Once you loved me, Gerald,—of that I feel confident; and I reciprocated your affection, God knows! Our love was, perhaps, curious, inasmuch as you were English and I was of a different creed and held different ideas from those which you considered right. It is always the same with a man and woman of different nationality—there must be a give-and-take principle between them. Between us, however, there was perfect confidence until, by a strange combination of circumstances—by a stroke of the sword of Fate—that incident occurred which led to our estrangement.”
She paused, her blanched lips shut tight. “Well?” I asked, “I am all attention. Why is it too late now for me to make reparation for the past?”
I loved her with all my soul. I was heedless of those words of the old Baronne, of Anderson’s suspicions, and Kaye’s denunciation. Even if she were a spy, I adored her. The fire of that old love had swept upon me, and I could not hold back, even though her touch might be as that of a leper and her lips venomous.
“Reparation is impossible,” she answered hoarsely. “Is not that sufficient?”
“No, it is not sufficient,” I answered clearly. “I will not be put off by such an answer.”
“It were better,” she cried—“better that I had died yesterday than suffer like this. You rescued me from death only to torture me.”