"You wished to see me? I might have refused to receive you, for I have that right. But I would not exercise it.--Still, I beg you to remember that this interview is hideously painful to me. Whatever you have to tell me, say it without a word that can increase my suffering, if it is possible.--You see, I have neither hostility, bitterness, nor distrust for you. Spare me any insinuations, any sarcasm, any cruelty.--It is all I ask, and it is my right." She spoke with a simple dignity that astonished Olivier. He no longer noticed the air of defiance that formerly used to exasperate him with her. From the moment he entered the salon he had been struck by a change in the character of her beauty. Her countenance was always the same, with its noble, pure outline, with its delicate and proud features, lit up by those fathomless eyes, so charming with their touching languorousness. But there was no longer that mobile curious expression, that look of unquiet yearning there used to be imprinted on it. This sensation was, however, too vague to impress her old lover, to change his hostility into tenderness. He had brooded over one idea too intensely during the last week, and an anger that was hardly restrained betrayed itself in his voice as he replied:-- "I will try to obey you, madame! Still, in order that the interview that I asked for may be understood, I shall have to say some things that you might perhaps wish unspoken." "Say them," she said, interrupting him. "All that I ask is that you should not add anything that is not distinctly necessary." "I will be very brief," said Olivier. There was a moment's silence. Then, in a still more bitter tone, he said:-- "Do you remember about two years ago in Rome, at the Palazzo Savorelli,--you see I am being exact,--a young man being presented to you, a young man who did not even think about you, and with whom you were--How can I describe it without wounding you?" "Say at once that I coquetted with him," Ely again interrupted, "and that I tried to make him love It is the truth." "Since you have such a good memory," went on Olivier, "you surely recollect that these coquetries went so far that the young man became your lover." What a shudder of horror shot through Ely, making her eyelids tremble with pain, as he accentuated the word with the cruelty that she had prayed him to spare her! He continued remorselessly:-- "You remember also that this love was a very miserable one. The man was sensitive, suspicious, jealous. He had suffered very much in his life. A woman who loved him truly would have had but one thought,--to lull to slumber the horrible malady of distrust that raged in him. You did just the opposite. Close your eyes and look back in memory to a certain ball at the Countess Steno's, and that young man in the corner of the salon and you dancing--with whom?"