ay nothing to his charge, for indeed
he is become a stranger to me. Ah! believe me, Evariste, I swear it, he
is no more to me than if he had never existed."

She had finished, but Gamelin vouchsafed no answer. He folded his arms,
a steadfast, sombre look settling in his eyes. His mistress and his
sister Julie were running together in his thoughts. Julie too had
hearkened to a lover; but, unlike, altogether unlike, he thought, the
unhappy Elodie, _she_ had let him have his will and carry her off, not
misled by the promptings of a tender heart, but to enjoy, far from her
home and friends, the sweets of luxury and pleasure. He was a stern
moralist; he had condemned his sister and he was half inclined to
condemn his mistress.

Elodie resumed in a very pleading voice:

"I was full of Jean-Jacques' philosophy; I believed men were naturally
honest and honourable. My misfortune was to have encountered a lover who
was not formed in the school of nature and natural morality, and whom
social prejudice, ambition, self-love, a false point of honour had made
selfish and treacherous."

The words produced the effect she had calculated on. Gamelin's eyes
softened. He asked:

"Who was your seducer? Is he a man I know?"

"You do not know him."

"Tell me his name."

She had foreseen the question and was firmly resolved not to answer it.

She gave her reasons:

"Spare me, I beseech you. For your peace of mind as for my own, I have
already said too much."

Then, as he still pressed her:

"In the sacred name of our love, I refuse to tell you anything to give
you a definite notion of this stranger. I will not give your jealousy a
shape to feed on; I will not bring a harassing shadow between you and
me. I have not forgotten the man's name, but I will never let you know
it."

Gamelin insisted on knowing the name of the seducer,--that was the word
he employed all through, for he felt no doubt Elodie had been seduced,
cajoled, trifled with. He could not so much as conceive any other
possibility,--that she had obeyed an overmastering desire, an
irresistible craving, listened to the tempter's voice in the shape of
her own flesh and blood; he could not find it credible that the fair
victim, a creature of hot passion and a fond heart, had offered herself
a willing sacrifice; to satisfy his ideal, she must needs have been
overborne by force or fraud, constrained by sheer violence, caught in
snares spread about her steps on every side.