he scene of that dinner in Paris upon his
memory--"something to draw us together, something to hold us together,
something strong. Don't deny it even now. Don't deny it. Can't I be of
some help, even now? Don't say I am utterly useless because I have been
so useless to you, so damnably useless in the past. I see all that, my
wretched uselessness to you through all these years. I am seeing it now
while I am speaking. All the time I'm seeing it. What you have deserved
and what you have had!"

He stopped, then he said again:

"What you have deserved and what you have had from me! And from--it was
so--it was the same long ago, not here. But till to-day you didn't know
that. I was wrong. I must have been wrong, hideously wrong, but I didn't
want you ever to know that. It isn't that I don't love truth. You know I
do. But I thought that he was right. And it is only lately, this summer,
that I have had any doubts. But I was wrong. I must have been wrong. It
was intended that you should know. God, perhaps, intended it."

He thought he heard a movement. But he was not quite sure. For there was
always the noise of the sea in the deserted chambers of the palace.

"It seems to me now as if I had always been deceived, mistaken, blind
with you, about you. I thought you need never know. I was mad enough
to think that. But I was madder still, for I thought--I must have
thought--that you could not bear to know, that you weren't strong enough
to endure the knowledge. But"--he was digging deep now, searching for
absolute truth: in this moment his natural passion for truth, in one
direction repressed for many years deliberately and consciously, in
other directions, perhaps almost unconsciously frustrated, took entire
possession of his being--"but nothing should ever be allowed to stand in
the way of truth. I believe that. I know it. I must, I will always act
upon the knowledge from this moment. Never mind if it is bitter, cruel.
Perhaps it is sometimes put into the world because of that. I've been a
horrible _faineant_, the last of _faineants_. I protected you from the
truth. With Gaspare I managed to do it. We never spoke of it--never. But
I think each of us understood. And we acted together for you in that.
And I--it has often seemed to me that it was a fine thing to do, and
that my motives in doing it were fine. But sometimes I have wondered
whether they weren't selfish--whether, instead of protecting you, I
wasn't only protecting mys