The man just gone, coarse, low-bred, brutal
soldier as he was, manflogger and drilling-block, had yet found
heart to feel my baseness, and words in which to denounce it.
What, then, would she say, when the truth came home to her? What
shape should I take in her eyes then? How should I be remembered
through all the years then?
Then? But now? What was she thinking now, at this moment as she
stood silent and absorbed near the stone seat, a shadowy figure
with face turned from me? Was she recalling the man's words,
fitting them to the facts and the past, adding this and that
circumstance? Was she, though she had rebuffed him in the body,
collating, now he was gone, all that he had said, and out of
these scraps piecing together the damning truth? Was she, for
all that she had said, beginning to see me as I was? The thought
tortured me. I could brook uncertainty no longer. I went nearer
to her and touched her sleeve.
'Mademoiselle,' I said in a voice which sounded hoarse and
unnatural even in my own ears, 'do you believe this of me?'
She started violently, and turned.
Pages:
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230