Marquis bending over Mme. de Plougastel. As in a dream he heard him ask:
"How long have you known this, Thérèse?"
"I ... I have always known it ... always. I confided him to Kercadiou. I saw him once as a child... Oh, but what of that?"
"Why was I never told? Why did you deceive me? Why did you tell me that this child had died a few days after birth? Why, Thérèse? Why?"
"I was afraid. I ... I thought it better so—that nobody, nobody, not even you, should know. And nobody has known save Quintin until last night, when to induce him to come here and save me he was forced to tell him."
"But I, Thérèse?" the Marquis insisted. "It was my right to know."
"Your right? What could you have done? Acknowledge him? And then? Ha!" It was a queer, desperate note of laughter. "There was Plougastel; there was my family. And there was you ... you, yourself, who had ceased to care, in whom the fear of discovery had stifled love. Why should I have told you, then? Why? I should not have told you now had there been any other way to ... to save you both. Once before I suffered just such dreadful apprehensions when you and he fought in the Bois. I was on my way to prevent it when you met me. I would have divulged the truth, as a last resource, to avert that horror. But mercifully God spared me the necessity then."
It had not occurred to any of them to doubt her statement, incredible though it might seem. Had any done so her present words must have resolved all doubt, explaining as they did much that to each of her listeners had been obscure until this moment.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr, overcome; reeled away to a chair and sat down heavily. Losing command of himself for a moment, he took his haggard face in his hands.
Through the windows open to the garden came from the distance the faint throbbing of a drum to remind them of
