“Fool!  Fool!” the man cried, groaning.  “Oh, fool that I have been!  Worm, animal!  Oh, fool not to see—­not to know!  Madman, imbecile, thing without a name!”

She stood white-faced, smitten with great fear over this abasement.  Not the least and faintest glimmer reached her of what it meant.  She stretched down a hand of protest, and it touched the man’s head.  As if the touch were a stroke of magic, he sprang upright before her.

“Now at last, Mademoiselle,” said he, “we two must speak plainly together.  Now at last I think I see clear, but I must know beyond doubt or question.  Oh, Mademoiselle, now I think I know you for what you are, and it seems to me that nothing in this world is of consequence beside that.  I have been blind, blind, blind!...  Tell me one thing.  Why did Arthur Benham leave his home two months ago?”

“He had to leave it,” she said, wondering.  She did not understand yet, but she was aware that her heart was beating in loud and fast throbs, and she knew that some great mystery was to be made plain before her.  Her face was very white.  “He had to leave it,” she said again. “You know as well as I. Why do you ask me that?  He quarrelled with his grandfather.  They had often quarrelled before—­over money—­always over money.  His grandfather is a miser, almost a madman.  He tried to make Arthur sign a paper releasing his inheritance—­the fortune he is to inherit from his father—­and when Arthur wouldn’t he drove him away.  Arthur went to his uncle—­Captain Stewart—­and Captain Stewart helped him to hide.  He didn’t dare go back because they’re all against him, all his family.  They’d make him give in.”

Ste. Marie gave a loud exclamation of amazement.  The thing was incredible—­childish.  It was beyond the maddest possibilities.  But even as he said the words to himself a face came before him—­Captain Stewart’s smiling and benignant face—­and he understood everything.  As clearly as if he had been present, he saw the angry, bewildered boy, fresh from David Stewart’s berating, mystified over some commonplace legal matter requiring a signature.  He saw him appeal for sympathy and counsel to “old Charlie,” and he heard “old Charlie’s” reply.  It was easy enough to understand now.  It must have been easy enough to bring about.  What absurdities could not such a man as Captain Stewart instil into the already prejudiced mind of that foolish lad?

His thoughts turned from Arthur Benham to the girl before him, and that part of the mystery was clear also.  She would believe whatever she was told in the absence of any reason to doubt.  What did she know of old David Stewart or of the Benham family?  It seemed to Ste. Marie all at once incredible that he could ever have believed ill of her—­ever have doubted her honesty.  It seemed to him so incredible that he could have laughed aloud in bitterness and self-disdain.  But as he looked at the girl’s white face and her shadowy, wondering eyes, all laughter, all bitterness, all cruel misunderstandings were swallowed up in the golden light of his joy at knowing her, in the end, for what she was.