“I know it!  I know it!” she cried.  “It’s my fault!  I was a fool!  I knew it all the time.  But I hoped—­I thought you might, if you knew—­”

And then again her tears choked her; she was convulsed with pain and grief.

Montague stood watching her, helpless with distress.  She caught hold of the arm of the chair, convulsively, and he put his hand upon hers.

“Mrs. Winnie—­” he began.

But she jerked her hand away and hid it.  “No, no!” she cried, in terror.  “Don’t touch me!”

And suddenly she looked up at him, stretching out her arms.  “Don’t you understand that I love you?” she exclaimed.  “You despise me for it, I know—­but I can’t help it.  I will tell you, even so!  It’s the only satisfaction I can have.  I have always loved you!  And I thought—­I thought it was only that you didn’t understand.  I was ready to brave all the world—­I didn’t care who knew it, or what anybody said.  I thought we could be happy—­I thought I could be free at last.  Oh, you’ve no idea how unhappy I am—­and how lonely—­and how I longed to escape!  And I believed that you—­that you might—­”

And then the tears gushed into Mrs. Winnie’s eyes again, and her voice became the voice of a little child.

“Don’t you think that you might come to love me?” she wailed.

Her voice shook Montague, so that he trembled to the depths of him.  But his face only became the more grave.

“You despise me because I told you!” she exclaimed.

“No, no, Mrs. Winnie,” he said.  “I could not possibly do that—­”

“Then—­then why—­” she whispered.—­“Would it be so hard to love me?”

“It would be very easy,” he said, “but I dare not let myself.”

She looked at him piteously.  “You are so cold—­so merciless!” she cried.

He answered nothing, and she sat trembling.  “Have you ever loved a woman?” she asked.

There was a long pause.  He sat in the chair again.  “Listen, Mrs. Winnie”—­he began at last.

“Don’t call me that!” she exclaimed.  “Call me Evelyn—­please.”

“Very well,” he said—­“Evelyn.  I did not intend to make you unhappy—­if I had had any idea, I should never have seen you again.  I will tell you—­what I have never told anybody before.  Then you will understand.”

He sat for a few moments, in a sombre reverie.

“Once,” he said, “when I was young, I loved a woman—­a quadroon girl.  That was in New Orleans; it is a custom we have there.  They have a world of their own, and we take care of them, and of the children; and every one knows about it.  I was very young, only about eighteen; and she was even younger.  But I found out then what women are, and what love means to them.  I saw how they could suffer.  And then she died in childbirth—­the child died, too.”