“Do you care to know,” he asked her, “what my business in Paris was?”

“If you wish to tell me!”

“Lucia! do not I wish to tell you everything?  Could I have kept a secret which was always in my thoughts from you, do you suppose?”

Lucia half rose.  “That is not generous,” she said.  “You have no right to speak so.  Yesterday you were kinder.”

“Yesterday I only thought of you.  To-day I have had time to think a little of myself.”

“No doubt you are right.  Only you ought not to have come to Paris—­at least not to us.  It would have been better if everything that belonged to our old life had been lost together.”

“Which means that you are quite willing to lose me?”

“Willing?  No.  But I can understand that it is better.”

“Can you?  You talk of losses—­listen to what I have lost.  You know what my life in Canada used to be—­plenty of work, and not much money—­but still reasonable hope of prosperity by-and-by.  I used to make plans then, of having a home of my own, and I was not content that it should be just like other people’s.  I thought it would be the brightest, warmest, happiest home in the world.  I knew it would be if I only got what I wanted.  A man can’t have a home without a wife.  I knew where my wife was to be found if ever I had one at all; and she was so sweet and good, and let me see so frankly that she liked and trusted me, that I—­it was all vanity, Lucia—­I never much doubted that in time I should make her love me.”

He stopped.  Lucia was looking at him eagerly.  Even yet she did not quite understand.  “Go on,” she said.

“There was my mistake,” he continued.  “I might have won her then perhaps.  But there came a visitor to the neighbourhood.  He was handsome—­at least women said so—­and could make himself agreeable.  He knew all about what people call the world—­he had plenty of talk about all sorts of small topics.  He was a very fine gentleman in fact, and you know what I was.  Well, naturally enough, he wanted amusement.  He looked about for it, I suppose, and was attracted by what had attracted me—­no—­I do not believe even that, for I loved her goodness, and he must have been caught by her beauty.  At any rate, I had to go away and leave him near her; and I heard after a while that he was gone.  That was late in autumn.  Very early this year, I heard of his marriage; and I thought she had been unharmed.

“My grandfather died, and I was rich enough to make that home I dreamed of, fit for its mistress.  I went to find her.  I found her, as I thought, lovelier and sweeter than ever.  She seemed to feel more than ever that I was of some use and value to her—­she made me believe that, next to her mother, she loved me best in the world.  I delayed asking her to be my wife, only because our days were so happy, that I feared to disturb them—­but I thought she was certainly mine.

“Then, all at once, this man, this Percy, who had left her in her trouble—­who was married—­made his appearance, and I knew that she had loved him all the while—­that she had never cared for me!”