“God knows I do not wish to deceive you.  Perhaps, if I had not come back here, I should in time—­not at once, Madame,—­have gone somewhere else, where I could enjoy the only thing in life which had come to be worth while living for.  But it was you—­you alone—­that brought me back here, to Lacville!”

“Why did you go straight to the Casino?” she faltered.  “And why?—­oh, why did you risk all that money?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Because I am a fool!” he answered, bitterly—­“a fool, and what the English rightly call ‘a dog in the manger!’ I ought to rejoice when I see you with that excellent fellow, Mr. Chester—­and as your friend,” he stopped short and then ended his sentence with the words, “I ought to be happy to know that you will have so excellent a husband!”

Sylvia also got up.

“You are quite mistaken,” she said, coldly.  “I shall never marry Mr. Chester.”

“I regret to hear you say that,” said Count Paul, seriously.  “A woman should not live alone, especially a woman who is young and beautiful, and—­and who has money.”

Sylvia shook her head.  She was angry—­more hurt and angry than she had ever felt before in her life.  She told herself passionately that the Comte de Virieu was refusing that which had not been offered to him.

“You are very kind,” she answered, lightly.  “But I have managed very well up to now, and I think I shall go on managing very well.  You need not trouble yourself about the matter, Count Paul.  Mr. Chester and I thoroughly understand one another—­” She waited, and gently she added, “I wish I could understand you—­”

“I wish I understood myself,” he said sombrely.  “But there is one thing that I believe myself incapable of doing.  Whatever my feeling, nay, whatever my love, for a woman, I would never do so infamous a thing as to try and persuade her to join her life to mine.  I know too well to what I should be exposing her—­to what possible misery, nay, to what probable degradation!  After all, a man is free to go to the devil alone—­but he has no right to drag a woman there with him!”

His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper, and he was gazing into Sylvia’s pale face with an anguished look of questioning and of pleading pain.

“I think that is true, Count Paul.”  Sylvia heard herself uttering gently, composedly, the words which meant at once so much and so little to them both.  “It is a pity that all men do not feel about this as you do,” she concluded mechanically.

“I felt sure you would agree with me,” he answered slowly.

“Ought we not to be going back to the villa?  I am expecting Mr. Chester to lunch, and though I know it is quite early, he has got into the way, these last few days, of coming early.”

Her words stung him in his turn.

“Stop!” he said roughly.  “Do not go yet, Mrs. Bailey.”  He muttered between his teeth, “Mr. Chester’s turn will come!” And then aloud, “Is this to be the end of everything—­the end of our—­our friendship?  I shall leave Lacville to-night for I do not care to stay on here after you have taunted me with having come back to see you!”