“I believed in his insight, in his will, in his absolute devotion; and, when the Mornington case started, it was he, as I now realize, who guided my actions and, later, those of Gaston Sauverand.  It was he who compelled me to practise lying and deceit, persuading me that he was working for Marie Fauville’s safety.  It was he who inspired us with such suspicion of yourself and who taught us to be so silent, where he and his affairs were concerned, that Gaston Sauverand did not even dare mention him in his interview with you.

“I don’t know how I can have been so blind.  But it was so.  Nothing opened my eyes.  Nothing made me suspect for a moment that harmless, ailing creature, who spent half his life in hospitals or nursing-homes, who underwent every possible sort of operation, and who, if he did sometimes speak to me of his love, must have known that he could not hope to—­”

Florence did not finish her sentence.  Her eyes had encountered Don Luis’s eyes; and she received a deep impression that he was not listening to what she said.  He was looking at her; and that was all.  The words she uttered passed unheard.

To Don Luis any explanation concerning the tragedy itself mattered nothing, so long as he was not enlightened on the one point that interested him, on Florence’s private thoughts about himself, thoughts of aversion, of contempt.  Outside that, anything that she could say was vain and tedious.

He went up to her and, in a low voice, said: 

“Florence, you know what I feel for you, do you not?”

She blushed, taken aback, as though the question was the very last that she expected to hear.  Nevertheless, she did not lower her eyes, and she answered frankly: 

“Yes, I know.”

“But, perhaps,” he continued, more eagerly, “you do not know how deeply I feel it?  Perhaps you do not know that my life has no other aim but you?”

“I know that also,” she said.

“Then, if you know it,” he said, “I must conclude that it was just that which caused your hostility to me.  From the beginning I tried to be your friend and I tried only to defend you.  And yet from the beginning I felt that for you I was the object of an aversion that was both instinctive and deliberate.  Never did I see in your eyes anything but coldness, dislike, contempt, and even repulsion.

“At moments of danger, when your life or your liberty was at stake, you risked committing any imprudence rather than accept my assistance.  I was the enemy, the man to be distrusted, the man capable of every infamy, the man to be avoided, and to be thought of only with a sort of dread.  Isn’t that hatred?  Is there anything but hatred to explain such an attitude?”

Florence did not answer at once.  She seemed to be putting off the moment at which to speak the words that rose to her lips.  Her face, thin and drawn with weariness and pain, was gentler than usual.