been another's? What you imagine is monstrous. But I love you, I love
you! I love only you. I never have loved any one except you."

He replied slowly, with cruel heaviness:

"'I shall be every day, at three o'clock, at our home, in the Rue
Spontini.' It was not a lover, your lover, who said these things? No!
it was a stranger, an unknown person."

She straightened herself, and with painful gravity said:

"Yes, I had been his. You knew it. I have denied it, I have told an
untruth, not to irritate or grieve you. I saw you so anxious. But I
lied so little and so badly. You knew. Do not reproach me for it. You
knew; you often spoke to me of the past, and then one day somebody told
you at the restaurant--and you imagined much more than ever happened.
While telling an untruth, I was not deceiving you. If you knew the
little that he was in my life! There! I did not know you. I did not
know you were to come. I was lonely."

She fell on her knees.

"I was wrong. I should have waited for you. But if you knew how slight
a matter that was in my life!"

And with her voice modulated to a soft and singing complaint she said:

"Why did you not come sooner, why?"

She dragged herself to him, tried to take his hands. He repelled her.