false; yet the truth itself is very vile, and--" I stopped short, in
despair of explaining or even tempering what had to come. I shrugged my
shoulders in my abandonment of hope, and I turned towards the window.
She crossed the room and came to stand beside me.

"Will you not tell me? Have you no faith in me? Ah, Monsieur de
Lesperon--"

"'Sh! child, I cannot. It is too late to tell you now."

"Oh, not too late! From what you say they will tell me, I should think,
perhaps, worse of you than you deserve. What is this thing you hide?
What is this mystery? Tell me, monsieur. Tell me."

Did ever woman more plainly tell a man she loved him, and that loving
him she would find all excuses for him? Was ever woman in better case to
hear a confession from the man that loved her, and of whose love she was
assured by every instinct that her sex possesses in such matters?
Those two questions leapt into my mind, and in resolving them I all but
determined to speak even now in the eleventh hour.

And then--I know not how--a fresh barrier seemed to arise. It was not
merely a matter of telling her of the wager I was embarked upon; not
merely a matter of telling her of the duplicity that I had practised,
of the impostures by which I had gained admittance to her father's
confidence and trust; not merely a matter of confessing that I was not
Lesperon. There would still be the necessity of saying who I was. Even
if she forgave all else, could she forgive me for being Bardelys the
notorious Bardelys, the libertine, the rake, some of whose exploits she
had heard of from her mother, painted a hundred times blacker than they
really were? Might she not shrink from me when I told her I was that
man? In her pure innocence she deemed, no doubt, that the life of every
man who accounted himself a gentleman was moderately clean. She would
not see in me--as did her mother--no more than a type of the best class
in France, and having no more than the vices of my order. As a monster
of profligacy might she behold me, and that--ah, Dieu!--I could not
endure that she should do whilst I was by.

It may be--indeed, now, as I look back, I know that I exaggerated my
case. I imagined she would see it as I saw it then. For would you credit
it? With this great love that was now come to me, it seemed the ideals
of my boyhood were returned, and I abhorred the man that I had been. The
life I had led now filled me with disgust and loathing; the notions
I had for