It had moved the young woman especially in every fibre of her being; the wild spirit of revolt, which had been dormant under her growing love, rose again in her heart. Her wounded pride, soothed, almost healed by that gentle influence, suddenly reopened and bled. She felt anew the hardness of the fate which placed her, in spite of all, at the mercy of that terrible Prince, the evil genius of her youth. As for Hautefeuille, all the legends gathered here and there about the tyranny and jealousy of the Archduke had suddenly taken shape before his eyes. That vision of the man and wife, face to face, one menacing, the other outraged, which had been so intolerable even to imagine, had been realized in an unforgetable picture during the five minutes that the Prince was in the room. That was enough to make him another man in this interview. Natures like his, pure and delicate, are liable to hesitations and indecisions which appear feeble, almost childish, so long as they are not confronted by a clear situation and a positive duty. It is enough for them to think they could be helpful to one they love in order to find in the sincerity of their devotion all the energy which they seem to lack. Pierre had felt that he could not even bear the look of Baroness Ely the moment he read in it the knowledge of his action. But now he was ready to tell her himself of this action, naturally, simply, in his irresistible and passionate desire to expiate his fault, if it were to blame for her suffering, which he had witnessed with an aching heart. "Monsieur," she began, after that silence which precedes an explanation, and which is more painful than the explanation itself, "I have written you that we must have a conversation upon a rather serious and difficult subject. But I wish you to be assured of one thing at the start--if in the course of our conversation I have to say anything that pains you, know that it will cost me a great deal;" she repeated, "a great deal."