“Chavoix! Your friend!”
The other nodded. He had spoken in broken sentences, without looking up and his breath now came with hard laboured gasps in the intervals, as if speaking and keeping silence were alike a pain to him. The stronger man felt touched with a reverent pity for the weak one at his side.
Again the swelling in the dying man’s throat increased his agony. His thoughts wandered, and he uttered fierce imprecations with words that had neither meaning nor context.
“Valérie! Valérie!” he cried in deep guttural tones, after giving vent to a volley of fearful oaths. “It’s you—your accursed treachery that has brought me to this! I die—I die in horrible torture the death of a dog, while you laugh, take your ease, and congratulate yourself upon getting rid of me so easily. Diable!” he screamed, making a desperate but futile effort to raise himself, “Trethowen shall know all—everything, and if he lives you will—ha, ha! you’ll die in greater degradation than myself. You shall suffer—by Heaven you shall—”
His hands were clenched and his face distorted by an expression of intense hatred and dogged revenge. He closed his eyes, as if to shape his thoughts, and lay for some time motionless, while Trethowen, who had watched the changes of his countenance and listened to the wild allegations against his wife, whom he thought so pure, sat regarding him anxiously, awaiting the convict’s further revelations.
Egerton and Valérie had met in Paris, he reflected. He had not been mistaken when jealousy had taken possession of him on that day he found them together in the studio. This truth cut short his resolution not to prejudge her without a full knowledge of the facts. It rose suddenly in his mind and covered every thought with a veil. His resolution broke down, and he argued with himself against it.
Clutching his arm, Bérard turned his fevered eyes again upon him, with an expression of terrible earnestness.
“I want,” he said, articulating with difficulty—“I want to tell you something more.”
“Concerning her?”
Making a gesture in the affirmative, he raised his head and glanced with eager eyes over the gunwale at the dear, calm sea.