to ponder. To let all that I had said sink in and advocate my cause,
as to me was very clear it must, I turned aside and moved to one of
the windows.

"Why did you not tell me before?" she asked suddenly. "Why - oh,
why - did you not confess to me the whole infamous affair as soon as
you came to love me, as you say you did?"

"As I say I did?" I repeated after her. "Do you doubt it? Can you
doubt it in the face of what I have done?"

"Oh, I don't know what to believe!" she cried, a sob in her voice.
"You have deceived me so far, so often. Why did you not tell me
that night on the river? Or later, when I pressed you in this very
house? Or again, the other night in the prison of Toulouse?"

"You ask me why. Can you not answer the question for yourself?
Can you not conceive the fear that was in me that you should shrink
away from me in loathing? The fear that if you cared a little, I
might for all time stifle such affection as you bore me? The fear
that I must ruin your trust in me? Oh, mademoiselle, can you not
see how my only hope lay in first owning defeat to Chatellerault,
in first paying the wager?"

"How could you have lent yourself to such a bargain?" was her next
question.

"How, indeed?" I asked in my turn. "From your mother you have
heard something of the reputation that attaches to Bardelys. I was
a man of careless ways, satiated with all the splendours life could