"I beg
you to forgive me--I've made a mistake. You don't know what I
thought you knew. You could, if I had been right, have rendered me
a service; and I had my reasons for assuming that you'd be in a
position to meet me."
"Your reasons?" he asked. "What were your reasons?"
I looked at him well; I hesitated; I considered. "Come and sit
down with me here, and I'll tell you." I drew him to a sofa, I
lighted another cigar and, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker's
one descent from the clouds, I recited to him the extraordinary
chain of accidents that had, in spite of the original gleam, kept
me till that hour in the dark. I told him in a word just what I've
written out here. He listened with deepening attention, and I
became aware, to my surprise, by his ejaculations, by his
questions, that he would have been after all not unworthy to be
trusted by his wife. So abrupt an experience of her want of trust
had now a disturbing effect on him; but I saw the immediate shock
throb away little by little and then gather again into waves of
wonder and curiosity--waves that promised, I could perfectly judge,
to break in the end with the fury of my own highest tides. I may
say that to-day as victims of unappeased desire there isn't a pin
to choose between us. The poor man's state is almost my
consolation; there are really moments when I feel it to be quite my
revenge.
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