What can be more terrible for a woman than the secret knowledge that to hold a man’s respect she must always keep one dark spot covered from his eyes?  Such a woman needs no future punishment.  She has all she deserves in this world.  My punishment had begun, and it would always go on through my life with Raoul, I knew, even if no great disaster came.  Into the heart of my happiness would come the thought of that hidden spot; how often, oh, how often, would I feel that thought stir like a black bat!

I could no longer rest with my eyes shut, at peace after the storm.  I shuddered and sobbed, though my lids were dry, and Raoul tried to soothe me, thinking it was but my excitement in playing for the first time a heavy and exacting part.  He little guessed how heavy and exacting it really was!

“Darling,” he said, “you were wonderful.  And how proud I was of you—­how proud I am.  I thought it would be impossible to worship you more than I did.  But I love you a thousand times more than ever to-night.”

It was true, I knew.  I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice.  Since his dreadful misfortune in losing the diamonds, since I had comforted him for their loss, and insisted on giving him all I had to help him out of his trouble, he had seen in me the angel of his salvation.  To-night his heart was almost breaking with love for me, who so ill deserved it.  Now, I had news for him, which would make him long to shout for joy.  If I chose, I could tell him that the jewels were safe.  He would love me still more passionately in his happiness, which I had given, than in his grief; and I would take all his love as if it were my right, hiding the secret of my treachery as long as I could.  But how long would that be?  How could I be sure that the theft of the treaty had not already been discovered, and that the avalanche of ruin was not on its way to blot us for ever out of life and love?

The fear made me nestle nearer to him, and cling tightly, because I said to myself that perhaps I might never be in his arms again:  that this might be the last time that his eyes—­those eyes that are not cold—­might look at me with love in them, as now.

“Suppose all these people out there had hated and hissed me, instead of applauding?” I asked.  “Would you still be proud of me, still care for me?”

“I’d love you better, if there could be a ‘better,’” he answered, holding me very close.

“You know, dearest one, most beautiful one, that I’m a jealous brute.  I can’t bear you to belong to others—­even to the public that appreciates you almost as much as you deserve to be appreciated.  Of course I’m proud that they adore you, but I’d like to take you away from them and adore you all by myself.  Why, if the whole world turned against you, there’d be a kind of joy in that for me.  I’d be so glad of the chance to face it for you, to shield you from it always.”

“Then, what is there would make you love me less?” I went on, dwelling on the subject with a dreadful fascination, as one looks over the brink of a precipice.