"An explanation between us? What explanation? To tell you what? To inform me of what? That you were that woman's lover last year, and that I am your successor?" Then, as though lashing himself to fury with his own words, he went on:-- "If it is to tell me again what you did before I knew whom you were talking about, you may spare yourself the pain. I have forgotten nothing.--Neither the story of the first lover, nor of the other, nor of the one who was the cause of your leaving her.--She is a monster of falsehood and hypocrisy. I know it, and you have proved it. Don't let us begin again. It hurts me too much, and, besides, it is useless. She died for me to-day. I no longer know her." "You are very hard upon her," replied Olivier, "and you have no right to be." The cynicism of the insults Pierre was hurling at Ely was insupportable. It betrayed so much suffering in the lover who was thus outraging a mistress whom only the night before he had idolized! And then the passionate, true tone of the woman was still ringing in his ears as she spoke of her love. An irresistible magnanimity compelled him to witness for her, and he repeated:-- "No, you have no right to accuse her. With you she has neither been deceitful nor hypocritical! She loves you, loves you deeply and passionately.--Be just. Could she tell you what you now know? If she has lied to you, it was to keep you; it was because you are the first, the only love of her life." "It is a lie!" cried Hautefeuille. "There is no love without complete sincerity.--But I would have forgiven her all, forgiven all the past, if she had told me.--Besides, there was a first day, a first hour.--I shall never forget that day and that hour.--We spoke of you that very day when I first met her. I can still hear her uttering your name. I did not hide from her how much I loved you. She knew through you how dearly you loved me.--It was an easy matter to never see me again, to not attract me, to leave me free to go my way! There are so many other men in the world for whom the past would have been nothing more than the past.--But no; what she wanted was a vengeance, a base, ignoble vengeance! You had left her. You had married. She took me, as an assassin takes a knife, to strike you to the heart.--You dare not deny it.--Why, I have read it; I know you believe that, for I have read it in your handwriting! Tell me, yes or no, did you write those words?" "Yes, but I was wrong," said Olivier. "I believed it then, but I was mistaken. Ah!" he continued with a tone of despair, "why must it be my lot to defend her to you?--But if I did not believe that she loves you do you not think that I should be the first to tell you, the first to say, 'She is a monster'?--Yes, I thought she had taken you in a spirit of revenge. I thought it from the day of my arrival, when we wandered in the pine forest and you spoke of her. I saw so clearly that you loved her, and oh! how I suffered!" "Ah! You admit it!" cried Pierre.