Now
amazement eliminated her emotion. "But when did you see that?
When?"
"I - I was mistaken. I know it now. Yet, at the time... surely,
Aline, that morning when you came to beg me not to keep my
engagement with him in the Bois, you were moved by concern for him?"
"For him! It was concern for you," she cried, without thinking
what she said.
But it did not convince him. "For me? When you knew - when all
the world knew what I had been doing daily for a week!"
"Ah, but he, he was different from the others you had met. His
reputation stood high. My uncle accounted him invincible; he
persuaded me that if you met nothing could save you."
He looked at her frowning.
"Why this, Aline?" he asked her with some sternness. "I can
understand that, having changed since then, you should now wish
to disown those sentiments. It is a woman's way, I suppose."
"Oh, what are you saying, Andre? How wrong you are! It is the
truth I have told you!"
"And was it concern for me," he asked her, "that laid you swooning
when you saw him return wounded from the meeting? That was what
opened my eyes.
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