She did not make any reply, and he could not understand her silence.
"Why do you not answer me?" he asked at length.
"Why? well, because you are telling me now exactly the opposite to what you said when you asked me to accept the Juzencourts' invitation."
"What did I say?" he asked, slightly embarrassed.
"You said that at Pont-sur-Loire it would be so easy to meet. You said that between the hours of luncheon and dinner there were two trains up and two down from The Pines to Pont-sur-Loire, and that I could get away so easily, as the Juzencourts never went out except to pay calls at the various country-houses in the neighbourhood, or to follow the paper chases. On my arrival here I found that all these details were perfectly exact."
"Yes, but it really is not so easy as I had imagined."
"Ah, Jean! instead of trying to deceive me in this way, it would be much better to tell me the truth."
"And the truth, according to you, is that I no longer care for you?"
"And," he asked, somewhat uneasily, "the rest?"--
"Is, that you are in love with Mademoiselle de Courtaix. Ah, do not deny it! it is so evident!" And then, after a moment's silence, she added: "And so natural!"
"I have nothing to forgive. I have never demanded anything from you, and you have never, never promised me anything. When I first began to care for you, I was not a widow; you must therefore have judged me severely, as a man nearly always does judge the woman who is weak enough to care for him when she ought not to."
"No, do not swear anything; you had all the more reason to judge me in that way, because I did not think it my duty to tell you what my life had been like until then. You doubtless believed that my husband was kind and affectionate, and that I endured no remorse, when I allowed myself to love you--"
"I did not think about it at all, I simply adored you," he said. And then hesitating, and with evident anxiety, he continued: "And now you will never care for me any more?"
"What!" she exclaimed, perfectly amazed at the unconscious selfishness of the man, "you wish me to go on caring for you?"
"You ask if I wish it? why, what would become of me without you? you who are my very life!" And then, as she moved back a step or two in sheer bewilderment, he went on: "Well, but whatever have you been imagining?--that I am going to marry Bijou, perhaps?"