Hilliard was looking across the river.  He walked more and more slowly, and turned at length to stand by the parapet.  His companion remained apart from him, waiting.  But he did not turn towards her again, and she moved to his side.

“I know how ungrateful I must seem.”  She spoke without looking at him.  “I have no right to refuse anything after all you——­”

“Don’t say that,” he interrupted impatiently.  “That’s the one thing I shall never like to think of.”

“I shall think of it always, and be glad to remember it——­”

“Come nearer—­give me your hand——­”

Holding it, he drew her against his side, and they stood in silence looking upon the Seine, now dark beneath the clouding night.

“I can’t feel sure of you,” fell at length from Hilliard.

“I promise——­”

“Yes; here, now, in Paris.  But when you are back in that hell——­”

“What difference can it make in me?  It can’t change what I feel now.  You have altered all my life, my thoughts about everything.  When I look back, I don’t know myself.  You were right; I must have been suffering from an illness that affected my mind.  It seems impossible that I could ever have done such things.  I ought to tell you.  Do you wish me to tell you everything?”

Hilliard spoke no answer, but he pressed her hand more tightly in his own.

“You knew it from Patty, didn’t you?”

“She told me as much as she knew that night when I waited for you in High Street.  She said you were in danger, and I compelled her to tell all she could.”

“I was in danger, though I can’t understand now how it went so far as that.  It was he who came to me with the money, from the gentleman at Hampstead.  That was how I first met him.  The next day he waited for me when I came away from business.”

“It was the first time that anything of that kind had happened?”

“The first time.  And you know what the state of my mind was then.  But to the end I never felt any—­I never really loved him.  We met and went to places together.  After my loneliness—­you can understand.  But I distrusted him.  Did Patty tell you why I left London so suddenly?”

“Yes.”

“When that happened I knew my instinct had been right from the first.  It gave me very little pain, but I was ashamed and disgusted.  He hadn’t tried to deceive me in words; he never spoke of marriage; and from what I found out then, I saw that he was very much to be pitied.”

“You seem to contradict yourself,” said Hilliard.  “Why were you ashamed and disgusted?”

“At finding myself in the power of such a woman.  He married her when she was very young, and I could imagine the life he had led with her until he freed himself.  A hateful woman!”

“Hateful to you, I see,” muttered the listener, with something tight at his heart.

“Not because I felt anything like jealousy.  You must believe me.  I should never have spoken if I hadn’t meant to tell you the simple truth.”