She did not answer, but raised her eyes to his. For an instant he met her gaze, but what he read there sent a chill to his heart and he sat down covering his face with his hands.
At last she spoke in a voice, changed and strained,—a voice which he had never heard, and he dropped his hands and listened, bolt upright in his chair.
“Jack, it has come at last. I have feared it and trembled,—ah! how often have I lain awake at night with this on my heart and prayed that I might die before you should ever know of it! For I love you, Jack, and if you go away I cannot live. I have de- ceived you;—it happened before I knew you, but since that first day when you found me weeping in the Luxembourg and spoke to me, Jack, I have been faithful to you in every thought and deed. I loved you from the first, and did not dare to tell you this—fearing that you would go away; and since then my love has grown—grown—and oh! I suffered!—but I dared not tell you. And now you know, but you do not know the worst. For him—now—what do I care? He was cruel—oh so cruel!”
She hid her face in her arms.
“Must I go on?” Must I tell you—can you not imagine, oh! Jack———”
He did not stir; his eyes seemed dead.
“I—I was so young, I knew nothing, and he said—said that he loved me———”
Trent rose and struck the candle with his clenched fist, and the room was dark.
The bells of St. Sulpice tolled the hour, and she started up, speaking with feverish haste,
