Left to themselves, Jean and Madame de Nezel continued strolling along, she in a natural, unaffected way, going on with the conversation they had commenced, and he absent-minded and ill-at-case. "Why do you not reproach me?" he said at last, abruptly, not able to contain himself any longer; "why do you not say all the bad things you think about me?" "Because I have nothing to reproach you for," she answered, very gently; "and I do not think any bad things about you." "Well, then, you do not care about me any longer." "I do not care about you any longer?" she said, and there was an accent of such intense grief in her voice that he was quite overcome by it. He knew so well how deeply she loved him, that he dreaded the thought of the awful suffering she would have to endure if he were to be quite straightforward with her now, and so, out of affection for her, he endeavoured to conceal from her the real truth. "Yes," he began, improvising with difficulty an excuse of which he had not thought until that moment, "you must have fancied that I was not thinking of you, for you have been here at The Pines a fortnight, and I have not sent you a line. The fact is, it is very difficult to arrange to meet here at Pont-sur-Loire; everyone knows me here, and, you see, for your sake, I scarcely liked to ask you to meet me in the town." She did not make any reply, and he could not understand her silence. "Why do you not answer me?" he asked at length. "Why? well, because you are telling me now exactly the opposite to what you said when you asked me to accept the Juzencourts' invitation." "What did I say?" he asked, slightly embarrassed. "You said that at Pont-sur-Loire it would be so easy to meet. You said that between the hours of luncheon and dinner there were two trains up and two down from The Pines to Pont-sur-Loire, and that I could get away so easily, as the Juzencourts never went out except to pay calls at the various country-houses in the neighbourhood, or to follow the paper chases. On my arrival here I found that all these details were perfectly exact." "Yes, but it really is not so easy as I had imagined." "Ah, Jean! instead of trying to deceive me in this way, it would be much better to tell me the truth." "And the truth, according to you, is that I no longer care for you?" "Yes, that is a part of the truth." "And," he asked, somewhat uneasily, "the rest?"-- "Is, that you are in love with Mademoiselle de Courtaix. Ah, do not deny it! it is so evident!" And then, after a moment's silence, she added: "And so natural!" "Do you forgive me?" "I have nothing to forgive. I have never demanded anything from you, and you have never, never promised me anything. When I first began to care for you, I was not a widow; you must therefore have judged me severely, as a man nearly always does judge the woman who is weak enough to care for him when she ought not to." "I swear to you--"