“Yes.”  She was twisting her handkerchief.

It was this simple act which brightened his memory.  He went over to his table.  Her gaze, full of trouble and shame, followed him.  Yes, there lay the letter; a film of dust covered it.  He remembered.

“It was an answer,” he said, smiling sadly.  He did not quite understand.  “It was an answer to my . . .”

“Give it to me, Monsieur; do not read it!” she begged, one hand pressing her heart, the other extended toward him appealingly.

“Not read it?” Her very agitation told him that there was something in the letter worth reading.  He calmly tore it open and read the biting words, the scorn and contempt which she had penned that memorable day.  The letter added nothing to the bitterness of his cup, only he was surprised at the quality of her wrath on that day.  But what surprised him more was when she snatched it from his hands, rushed to the fire, and cast the letter into it.  She watched it writhe and curl and crisp and vanish.  He saw nothing in this action but a noble regret that she had caused him pain.  Nevertheless, all was not clear to him.

Silence.

“Well, Madame?”

“I . . .  I have brought you another!” Redder than ever her face flamed.  The handkerchief was resolving itself into shreds.

“Another letter?” vaguely.

“No, no!  Another . . . another answer!”

How still everything had suddenly grown to him!  “Another answer?  You have brought me another answer?” Then the wine of life rushed through his veins, and all darkness was gone.  “Diane, Diane!” he cried, springing toward her.

“Yes, yes; always call me that!  Never call me Gabrielle!”

“And Victor?”

Her hands were against his breast and she was pushing him back.  “Oh, it is true that I loved him, as a woman would love a brave and gallant brother.”  A strand of hair fell athwart her eyes and she brushed it aside.

“But I?—­I, whom you have made dance so sorrily?—­but I?”

“To-night I saw you . . .  I could see you,” incoherently, “alone, bereft of the friend you loved and who loved you. . . .  I thought of you as you faced them all that day! . . .  How calm and brave you were! . . .  You said that some day you would force me to love you.  You said I was dishonest.  I was, I was!  But you could never force me to love you, because . . . because. . . .”  With a superb gesture of abandon which swept aside all barriers, all hesitancies, all that hedging convention which compels a woman to be silent, she said:  “If you do not immediately tell me that you still love me madly, I shall die of shame!”

“Diane!” He forced her hands from her burning face.

“Yes, yes; I love you, love you with all my soul; all, all!  And I have come to you this night in my shame, knowing that you would never have come to me.  Wait!” still pressing him back, for he was eager now to make up in this exquisite moment all he had lost.  “Oh, I tried to hate you; lied to myself that I wanted nothing but to bring you to your knees and then laugh at you.  For each moment I have made you suffer I have suffered an hour.  Paul, Paul, can you love me still?”