"I thought I might trust in his sense of what was due to himself and of what was compassionate toward me."
I closed the door and seated myself by her side.
She removed her hands from her face when she felt me near her.
She looked at me with a cold and steady surprise.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I am going to try if I can recover my place in your estimation," I said.
"I am going to ask your pity for a man whose whole heart is yours, whose whole life is bound up in you."
She started to her feet, and looked round her incredulously, as if doubting whether she had rightly heard and rightly interpreted my last words.
Before I could speak again, she suddenly faced me, and struck her open hand on the table with a passionate resolution which I now saw in her for the first time.
"Stop!" she cried.
"There must be an end to this.
And an end there shall be.
Do you know who that man is who has just left the house?
Answer me, Mr. Germaine!
I am speaking in earnest."
There was no choice but to answer her. She was indeed in earnest—vehemently in earnest.
"His letter tells me," I said, "that he is Mr. Van Brandt."
She sat down again, and turned her face away from me.
"Do you know how he came to write to you?" she asked.
"Do you know what made him invite you to this house?"
I thought of the suspicion that had crossed my mind when I read Van Brandt's letter. I made no reply.
"You force me to tell you the truth," she went on.
"He asked me who you were, last night on our way home.
I knew that you were rich, and that he wanted money. I told him I knew nothing of your position in the world.
He was too cunning to believe me; he went out to the public-house and looked at a directory. He came back and said,
'Mr. Germaine has a house in Berkeley Square and a country-seat in the Highlands.
He is not a man for a poor devil like me to offend; I mean to make a friend of him, and I expect you to make a friend of him too.'
He sat down and wrote to you.
I am living under that man's protection, Mr. Germaine.
His wife is not dead, as you may suppose; she is living, and I know her to be living.
I wrote to you that I was beneath your notice, and you have obliged me to tell you why.
Am I sufficiently degraded to bring you to your senses?"
I drew closer to her.
She tried to get up and leave me.
I knew my power over her, and used it (as any man in my place would have used it) without scruple.
I took her hand.
"I don't believe you have voluntarily degraded yourself," I said.
"You have been forced into your present position: there are circumstances which excuse you, and which you are purposely keeping back from me.
Nothing will convince me that you are a base woman.
Should I love you as I love you, if you were really unworthy of me?"
She struggled to free her hand; I still held it.
She tried to change the subject.
"There is one thing you haven't told me yet," she said, with a faint, forced smile. "Have you seen the apparition of me again since I left you?"
"No.
Have you ever seen me again, as you saw me in your dream at the inn in Edinburgh?"
"Never.
Our visions of each other have left us.
Can you tell why?"
If we had continued to speak on this subject, we must surely have recognized each other.
But the subject dropped.