"Regret for what, Mademoiselle?" he exclaimed roughly. "What, I pray you, had you to regret? You say that you wept countless tears--what for? Had you to mourn the only illusion of your life? Had you to mourn the loss of every hope which for days and nights had haunted you with its sweet, insistent call? Had you to weep because the one being in this mean and sordid world whom you thought pure and true--almost holy--suddenly appeared before you false and cruel--double-tongued and insidious, a commonplace siren set to lay a trap for men? Had you to weep because the being whom you had learned to worship had with wanton frolic and a mocking smile plucked out your heart-strings and left you forlorn and desolate, a prey to ignominy and to lifelong regret? And had you to weep tears of bitter humiliation in the knowledge that those who hated and despised you were laughing their fill at your folly? Oh! I, too, Mademoiselle Fernande, was young then ... I, too, was inexperienced ... I was a dolt and a fool--but what wrong, in God's name, had I done you that you should treat me so?" Silently Fernande had listened, her hand grasping a clump of branches of young chestnut, else mayhap she would have fallen. That feeling of a veil enveloping her head was still with her; there was a buzzing in her ear through which his harsh voice came with a sound like hammering upon the portals of her brain. The agony and misery which rang out from his words found their echo in her own heart. Indeed, many a time in the past year had she felt pitifully sorry for the man whom she had wronged with such unpardonable thoughtlessness, but never before had she felt as she did now; never before had she realized the full extent of the misery which she had caused. His voice broke into a heartrending sob. He covered his face with his hands with a gesture of such racking pain, that she would have given her very life at this moment for the right to comfort him.