"No, no; the great world you have inhabited at Paris and elsewhere.
I can understand that at Lavedan you should find little of interest,
and - and that your inactivity should render you impatient to be
gone."

"If there were so little to interest me then it might be as you say.
But, oh, mademoiselle--" I ceased abruptly. Fool! I had almost
fallen a prey to the seductions that the time afforded me. The
balmy, languorous eventide, the broad, smooth river down which we
glided, the foliage, the shadows on the water, her presence, and our
isolation amid such surroundings, had almost blotted out the matter
of the wager and of my duplicity.

She laughed a little nervous laugh, and - maybe to ease the tension
that my sudden silence had begotten - "You see," she said, "how your
imagination deserts you when you seek to draw upon it for proof of
what you protest. You were about to tell me of - of the interests
that hold you at Lavedan, and when you come to ponder them, you find
that you can think of nothing. Is it - is it not so?" She put the
question very timidly, as if half afraid of the answer she might
provoke.

"No; it is not so," I said.

I paused a moment, and in that moment I wrestled with myself.
Confession and avowal - confession of what I had undertaken, and
avowal of the love that had so unexpectedly come to me - trembled
upon my lips, to be driven shuddering away in fear.