“But I would have taken him away from you in the manner that would have hurt you the worst. My sister was true to you. I would have been just as true, and after you had suffered the torments of hell, it was my plan to reveal everything to you. But you would have had your punishment by that time. When you were at the very end of your strength, when you trembled on the edge of oblivion, then I would have hunted you out and laughed at you and told you the truth. But you would have had years of anguish--years, I say.” “I have already had years of agony, pray do not overlook that fact,” said he. “I suffered for twenty years. I was at the edge of oblivion more than once, if it is a pleasure for you to hear me say it, Thérèse.” “It does not offset the pain that her suffering brought to me. It does not counterbalance the unhappiness you gave to her boy, nor the stigma you put upon him. I am glad that you suffered. It proves to me that you secretly considered yourself to be in the wrong. You doubted yourself. You were never sure, and yet you crushed the life out of her innocent, bleeding heart. You let her die without a word to show that you------” “I was lost to the world for years,” he said. “There were many years when I was not in touch with------” “But her letters must have reached you. She wrote a thousand of--------” “They never reached me,” he said significantly. “You ordered them to be destroyed?” she cried in sudden comprehension. “I must decline to answer that question.” She gave him a curious, incredulous smile and then abruptly returned to her charge. “When my sister came home, degraded, I was nine years of age, but I was not so young that I did not know that a dreadful thing had happened to her. She was blighted beyond all hope of recovery. It was to me, little me, that she told her story over and over again, and it was I to whom she read all of the pitiful letters she wrote to you. My father wanted to come to America to kill you. He did come later on to plead with you and to kill you if you would not listen to him. But you had gone--to Africa, they said. I could not understand why you would not give to her that little baby boy. He was hers, and------” She stopped short in her recital and covered her eyes with her hands. He waited for her to go on, sitting as rigid as the image that faced him from beyond the table's end.