just seen fall so low, was a cry of truth, an avowal in which she would
find the throb of a last remnant of honor. If he were silent it was not
because he was preparing a denial. The tenor of Maud's letter left no
doubt as to the nature of the proofs she had in her hand, which she had
there no doubt. How? He did not ask himself that question, governed as
he was by a phenomenon in which was revealed to the full the singular
complexity of his nature. The Slav's especial characteristic is a
prodigious, instantaneous nervousness. It seems that those beings with
the uncertain hearts have a faculty of amplifying in themselves, to the
point of absorbing the heart altogether, states of partial, passing, and
yet sincere emotion. The intensity of their momentary excitement thus
makes of them sincere comedians, who speak to you as if they felt
certain sentiments of an exclusive order, to feel contradictory ones the
day after, with the same ardor, with the same untruthfulness, unjustly
say the victims of those natures, so much the more deceitful as they are
more vibrating.

He suffered, indeed, on discovering that Maud had been initiated into
his criminal intrigue, but he suffered more for her than for himself. It
was sufficient for that suffering to occupy a few moments, a few hours.
It reinvested the personality of the impassioned and weak husband who
loved his wife while betraying her. There was, indeed, a shade of it in
his adventure, but a very slight shade. And yet, he did not think he was
telling an untruth, when he finally broke the silence to say to her whom
he had so long deceived:

"You have avenged yourself with much severity, Maud, but you had the
right.... I do not know who has informed you of an error which was very
culpable, very wrong, very unfortunate, too.... I know that I have in
Rome enemies bent upon my ruin, and I am sure they have left me no means
of defending myself. I have deceived you, and I have suffered."

He paused after those words, uttered with a tremor of conviction which
was not assumed. He had forgotten that ten minutes before he had entered
the room with the firm determination to hide his duel and its cause from
the woman for whose pardon he would at that moment have sacrificed his
life without hesitation. He continued, in a voice softened by affection:
"Whatever they have told you, whatever you have read, I swear to you,
you do not know all."

"I know enough," interrupted Maud, "since I kno