She stopped for a moment and passed her hands wildly over her face. No, no! She felt incapable of making this confession. He would despise her; and inventing, as she went on, a kind of incoherent compromise between her desire to unbosom herself and the fear of repelling René, she began again. 'It is a horrible story. My father died. There were letters to get back with which his enemies might have blackened his memory. This required money--a good deal. I had none. My husband stood aloof. Then this man came. I lost my head, and once he had me in his grasp he would not let me go. Ah! can you not understand that I lied only to keep you?' René had been watching her as these hurried words fell from her lips. The story of rescuing her father's honour he knew to be a fresh lie, but her last cry, uttered with almost savage ardour, had the ring of truth in it What mattered to him all the rest? He would know by her answer whether this love, the only sincerity to which she now laid claim, was strong enough to triumph over all else. 'So much the better!' he replied. 'Yes, so much the better if you are the slave of a wretched past that weighs you down! So much the better if your subjection to this man causes you such horror! You say that you have loved me--that you still love me, and that you lied only to keep me? I now, offer you an opportunity of giving me such proofs of that love as will put an end to all my doubts. 'I ask you to efface the past for ever and with one stroke. I too love you, Suzanne--ah! how tenderly! Do not ask me what my feelings were on learning what I have learnt, on seeing what I have seen. If it has not killed me, it is because we do not die of despair. I am ready to forgive all, to forget all, provided I know of a certainty that you really love me. I am free, and, since you have no children, you too are free. I am ready to give up everything for you, and I have come to ask you whether you are ready to do the same. We will go wherever you like--to Italy, to England, to any country where we shall be sure of finding no traces of your past life. That past I will blot out; my belief in your love will give me strength to do this. I shall say to myself: "She did not know me; but as soon as I bared my heart there was nothing that could withstand her love." To accept the present horrible state of things is impossible. To see you coming to me stained by this man's caresses--or even, if you should break with him, to doubt the reality of the rupture, and to reassume the degrading _rôle_ of a spy I have already played--no, Suzanne, do not ask it of me! We have reached that point when we must be all or nothing to each other--either absolute strangers or lovers who find in their love compensation for the loss of family, country, and the whole world. It is for you to choose.'