He paused, bit his under lip, and went on in the same slow, deliberate way: “I discovered, to my extreme sorrow, that you did not love me as you claimed you did. It was a bitter pill for me to swallow; but even then I found excuses for you. The temptation of great wealth and--permit me to add in simple justice--of a state almost unequaled here or elsewhere. You were young, well-born, and poor. This is not a--taunt, far from it--but a straight and plain statement. Your beauty entitled you to the best that this earth can provide, and, meeting me on your road, you intentionally dazzled me, using, perhaps, not the most delicate of means to do so; but I was too blind then to discriminate--my fault entirely! I confess that I was to blame for not having been more keen-sighted, and even to-day I rest that blame upon myself.” He turned his gaze away from the wild stare of her eyes, and at once she tottered to her feet. “Basil!” she cried. “Basil, I love you; you know I love you and have always loved you!” And, so queerly are women constructed, that at that moment when she was being shown in one flash how completely she had lost him, she felt with a keen pang how far above other men he towered, how fine and strong he really was, and what a lover he might have remained, but for her own wilful folly. He did not move, he quietly continued bending his grave eyes upon her, scanning from head to foot this beautiful creature offering herself in a flash of awakening passion; her light draperies clinging to her like foam about Aphrodite, her glorious eyes wet with tears more genuine than had ever glistened there, her white arms yearningly stretched out to him. “What a pity,” he said, simply, “that you should not have thought of all this before!” She half fell back as if he had struck her, then, impelled by a swift instinct to do all that she could to save herself, she suddenly flung herself at him, her head upon his breast, her loose-piled hair, shaken from its fastening ribbon by the violence of the action, tumbling like a mantle in lustrous ripples all around her. “Basil! _My_ Basil!” she moaned. “I am yours, only yours!” One part of her brain was working feverishly, for she must try to guess--and that quickly--what he knew, what had changed him so; the other part was inert and dazed. It was a crucial moment. Firmly he detached her clinging hands from his shoulders, and, holding her by both slender wrists, he pressed her gently toward the lounge; but her hitherto dormant fighting powers were fully aroused now, and she struggled free, to fling herself in utter abasement at his feet, clasping his knees desperately. An expression of indescribable pain contracted his features, but she did not see that; all she knew was that he lifted her up ever so gently, as though she were a mere object to be removed from his path, and placed her in the same impersonal way where she had sat before.