“Coward!  Coward!  It’s you who are betraying us!  Coward!  Oh, I knew that you were capable of the meanest treachery!  There you stand like an executioner!  Oh, you villain, you coward!”

She fell into her chair, exhausted and sobbing, with her hand to her face.

Don Luis turned away.  Strange to say, he experienced no sense of pity; and Florence’s tears affected him no more than her insults had done, no more than if he had never loved the girl.  He was glad of this release.  The horror with which she filled him had killed his love.

But, when he once more stood in front of them after taking a few steps across the room, he saw that they were holding each other’s hands, like two friends in distress, trying to give each other courage; and, again yielding to a sudden impulse of hatred, for a moment beside himself, he gripped the man’s arm: 

“I forbid you—­By what right—?  Is she your wife?  Your mistress?  Then—­”

His voice became perplexed.  He himself felt the strangeness of that fit of anger which suddenly revealed, in all its force and all its blindness, a passion which he thought dead.  And he blushed, for Gaston Sauverand was looking at him in amazement; and he did not doubt that the enemy had penetrated his secret.

A long pause followed, during which he met Florence’s eyes, hostile eyes, full of rebellion and disdain.  Had she, too, guessed?

He dared not speak another word.  He waited for Sauverand’s explanation.  And, while waiting, he gave not a thought to the coming revelations, nor to the tremendous problems of which he was at last about to know the solution, nor to the tragic events at hand.

He thought of one thing only, thought of it with the fevered throbbing of his whole being, thought of what he was on the point of learning about Florence, about the girl’s affections, about her past, about her love for Sauverand.  That alone interested him.

“Very well,” said Sauverand.  “I am caught in a trap.  Fate must take its course.  Nevertheless, can I speak to you?  It is the only wish that remains to me.”

“Speak,” replied Don Luis.  “The door is locked.  I shall not open it until I think fit.  Speak.”

“I shall be brief,” said Gaston Sauverand.  “For one thing, what I can tell you is not much.  I do not ask you to believe it, but to listen to it as if I were possibly telling the truth, the whole truth.”

And he expressed himself in the following words: 

“I never met Hippolyte and Marie Fauville, though I used to correspond with them—­you will remember that we were all cousins—­until five years ago, when chance brought us together at Palmero.  They were passing the winter there while their new house on the Boulevard Suchet was being built.

“We spent five months at Palmero, seeing one another daily.  Hippolyte and Marie were not on the best of terms.  One evening after they had been quarrelling more violently than usual I found her crying.  Her tears upset me and I could not longer conceal my secret.  I had loved Marie from the first moment when we met.  I was to love her always and to love her more and more.”