'Yes,' he said simply.
There was a long silence in the prison.
One of the children, probably Willem, stirred and whimpered uneasily in his sleep; outside the guard paced on the dusty road.
At last she said: 'What we did was wrong - very wrong.'
She turned towards him.
Truly, I did not mean to do wrong when I went to Paris, neither did John.
We did not go with that in mind at all.
I do not want that you should think it was his fault.
It was nobody's fault, neither of us.
Also, it did not seem wrong at the time.'
His mind drifted back fifty years.
'I know,' he said.
'That's how these things happen.
But you aren't sorry, are you?'
She did not answer that, but she went on more easily.
'He was very, very naughty, monsieur.
The understanding was that I was to show him Paris, and it was for that that I went to Paris to meet him.
But when the time came, he was not interested in the churches or in the museums, or the picture-galleries at all.'
There was a touch of laughter in her voice.
'He was only interested in me.'
'Very natural,' he said.
It seemed the only thing to say.
'It was very embarrassing, I assure you, I did not know what I should do.'
He laughed. 'Well, you made your mind up in the end.'
She said reproachfully: 'Monsieur - it is not a matter to laugh over.
You are just like John.
He also used to laugh at things like that.'
He said: 'Tell me one thing, Nicole.
Did he ask you if you would marry him?'
She said: 'He wanted that we should marry in Paris before he went back to England.
He said that under English law that would be possible.'
'Why didn't you?' he asked curiously.
She was silent for a minute.
Then she said: 'I was afraid of you, monsieur.'
'Of me?'
She nodded.
'I was terrified.
It now sounds very silly, but - it was so.'
He struggled to understand.
'What were you frightened of?' he asked.
She said: 'Figure it to yourself.
Your son would have brought home a foreign girl, that he had married very suddenly in Paris.
You would have thought that he had been foolish in a foreign city, as young men sometimes are.
That he had been trapped by a bad woman into an unhappy marriage.
I do not see how you could have thought otherwise.'
'If I had thought that at first,' he said, 'I shouldn't have thought it for long.'
'I know that now.
That is what John told me at the time.
But I did not think that it was right to take the risk.
I told John, it would be better for everybody that we should be a little more discreet, you understand.'