She continued to gaze at him fixedly, without turning away her great eyes, as forgetting himself, he rushed on: 

“Yes, let me know the truth—­that will be nothing now.  Besides, I have guessed it.  Only I must know one way or the other.  All these years I have lived in doubt.  You see what it means to me.  You must understand what is due me after all our life together.  Madeleine, did you lie to me?”

“No.”

“Listen,” he said, desperately.  “You never asked me the same question—­why, I never understood—­but if you had questioned me I could not have answered truthfully what you did.  There, you see, there is no longer the slightest reason why you should not speak the truth.”

She half closed her eyes—­wearily.

“I have told—­the truth.”

“Ah, I can’t believe it,” he cried, carried away.  “Oh, cursed day when I told you what I did.  It’s that which tortures me.  You adore me—­you don’t wish to hurt me, to leave a wound behind, but I swear to you if you told me the truth I should feel a great weight taken from my heart, a weight that has been here all these years.  I should know that every corner of your soul had been shown to me, nothing withheld.  I should know absolutely, Madeleine, believe me, when I tell you this, when I tell you I must know.  Every day of my life I have paid the penalty, I have suffered the doubts of the damned, I have never known an hour’s peace!  I beg you, I implore you, only let me know the truth; the truth—­I must know the truth!”

He stopped suddenly, trembling all over, and held out his hands to her, his face lashed with suffering.

“I have not lied,” she said slowly, after a long study.  She raised her eyes, feebly made the sign of the cross, and whispered, “I swear it.”

Then he no longer held in his tears.  He dropped his head, and his body shook with sobs, while from time to time he repeated, “Thank God, thank God.”

IV

The next day Madeleine Conti had a sudden turn for the worse, which surprised the attendants.  Doctor Kimball, the American, doctor, and Pere Francois, who had administered the last rites, were walking together in the little formal garden, where the sun flung short, brilliant shadows of scattered foliage about them.

“She was an extraordinary artist and her life was more extraordinary,” said Dr. Kimball.  “I heard her debut at the Opera Comique.  For ten years her name was the gossip of all Europe.  Then all at once she meets a man whom no one knows, falls in love, and is transformed.  These women are really extraordinary examples of hysteria.  Each time I know one it makes me understand the scientific phenomenon of Mary Magdalene.  It is really a case of nerve reaction.  The moral fever that is the fiercest burns itself out the quickest and seems to leave no trace behind.  In this case love came also as a religious conversion.  I should say the phenomena were identical.”