. You returned my letter
unopened. But had you asked her--the woman--the whole truth"--

"If it could make any difference, I will ask her to-morrow."

He did not understand. He thought she was speaking ironically.

"You are harder than you know," he said heavily. "But I will speak. It is
for the last time. Will you hear me?"

"I do not wish to, but I will not go."

"I had met her five years before there was anything between you and me.
She accepted the situation when she understood that I would not marry her.
The child was born. Time went on. I loved you. I told her. She agreed to
go away to England: I gave her money. The day you found us together was
to have been the last that I should see of her. The luck was against me.
It always has been in things that I cared for. You sent a man to kill
me"--

"No, no. I did not send any one. I might have killed you--or her--had I
been anything more than a child, but I sent no one. You believe that, do
you not?"

For the first time since they had begun to speak she showed a little
excitement, but immediately was cold and reserved again.

"I have always believed you," he said again. "The man who is your husband
came to kill me"--

"He went to fight you," she said, looking at him more intently than she
had yet done.

A sardonic smile played for a moment at his lips. He seemed about to
speak through it. Presently, however, his eyes half closed as with a
sudden thought he did not return her gaze, but looked down to where the
graves of monks and abbots, and sinners maybe, were as steps upon the
river bank.

"What does it matter?" he thought. "She hates me." But he said aloud:
"Then, as you say, he came to fight me. I hear that he is dead," he added
in a tone still more softened. He had not the heart to meet her scorn with
scorn. As he said, it didn't matter if she hated him. It would be worth
while remembering, when he had gone, that he had been gentle with her and
had spared her the shame of knowing that she had married not only a
selfish brute, but a coward and a would be assassin as well. He had only
heard rumors of her life since he had last seen her, twelve years before,
but he knew enough to be sure that she was aware of Fairfax Detlor's true
character. She had known less still of his life, for since her marriage
she had never set foot in Louisiana, and her mother, while she lived,
never mentioned his name or told her more than that the Telford plantation
had been so