“But it is true, Paul!  It is all too true!”

“It is a crime,” he fairly groaned.

She shrank from him.  “Don’t say that, Paul!”

“But you know it is true!  Opal, just think!  If you give your sweet self to him—­and that is all you can give him, as you and I know—­if you give yourself to him, I say, I—­I shall go mad!”

“Yet women have loved him,” she began, bravely, attempting to defend herself.  “Women—­some kinds of women—­really love him now.  He has a power of—­compelling—­love—­even yet!”

“And such women,” Paul cried hoarsely, “are more to be honored than you if you consent to become his property with no love in your heart!  Don’t plead extenuating circumstances.  There can be no extenuating circumstances in all the world for such a thing.”

She winced as though he had struck her, for she knew in her heart that what he said was true, brutally true.  The Boy was only voicing her own sentiments—­the theory to which she had always so firmly clung.

As Paul paused, a sudden realization of his own future overwhelmed him and locked his lips.  He smiled sadly.  Who was he that he should talk like that?  Was not he, too, pleading extenuating circumstances?  True, he was a man and she was a woman, and the world has two distinct standards—­but—­no less than she—­he was selling himself for gain.

“Paul, Paul!  I’m afraid you don’t understand!  It isn’t money.  Surely you don’t think that!  It isn’t money—­it is honor—­honor, do you hear?  My dead mother’s honor, and my father’s breaking heart!”

The secret was out, at last.  This, then, was the shadow that had cast its gloom over the family ever since he had come in contact with them.  It was even worse than he had thought.  That she—­the lovely Opal—­should have to sacrifice her own honor to save her mother’s!

Honor! honor! how many crimes are committed in thy name!

“Tell me about it,” he said sympathetically.

And she told him, sparing herself details, as far as possible, of the storm of scandal about to burst upon the family—­a storm from which only the sacrifice of herself could save the family name of Ledoux, and her mother’s memory.  It might, or might not, be true, but the Count de Roannes claimed to be able—­and ready—­to bring proof.  And, if it were true, she was not a Ledoux at all, and her father was not her father at all, except in name.  No breath of ill-fame had ever reached her mother’s name before.  They had thought she had happily escaped the curse of her mother before her.  But the Count claimed to know, and—­well, he wanted her—­Opal—­and, of course, it was possible, and of course he would do anything to protect the good name of his wife, if Opal became his wife, and——­

“So, you see, Paul—­in the end, I shall have to—­submit!”

She had not told it at all well, she thought, but Paul little cared how the story was told.