"Say 'Colonel' and you will be exact. Yes; I am the lover whom you cast off in favor of the student Ruprecht, as this Clemenceau was called when he pottered about Europe, sketching ruined doorways and broken windows and dreamed of architectural structures. A man whom destiny had chosen to be the greatest demolisher of the age! what sarcasm!" "Well, you should be the last to complain! Was it like devotion to me that you should try to abduct La Belle Stamboulane in the public street? "To remove her from your path! She was your rival in the music hall! Love her, love a Jewess? You do not understand men--you fancy they are put here for your pleasure, safeguard and redemption. An error! We are neither your joy or your punishment. Let that pass. You married the student Ruprecht who turned out to be your cousin Felix Clemenceau. For a time you played the part of the idolizing young wife admirably. You never reproached his father's head for the murder of your aunt and he said never a word about the old beggar-sovereign Baboushka. In your gladness at having stolen the man away from Fraulein Daniels, I believe you imagined that it was love you felt. Not a bit of it! Love is the sun of the soul--all light, heat, motion and creativeness! there are no more two loves than two suns. There may be two or many passions, but not two loves. If a man loved twice, it would not be love!" The hard man spoke so tenderly that his hearer dared not scoff. "He ran through your witchery after a while, but he built his hopes upon maternity. You had a child but you connived at its death, if you did not deal the stroke." How accurately Sendlingen had measured this woman! Another would have cried out against him at this accusation--or burst into tears and so disarmed a less adamantine man. She did not blanch; she did not lift her hand to cover her unaltered features, but listened as idly as she would to the last plaint of the fool who might blown out his brains at her feet. The false Cantagnac pursued in his natural voice, rancid and imperious, rolling out the gutturals like a heavy wagon thundering over an old road. "It follows, madame, that if you run to your husband at a faster gait than you took to run away with the Baron of Linden, to inform him of my proposition, I will tell him what you hear--I will accuse you of infanticide, of unfaithfulness--" "He knows that!" ejaculated the woman with irony and in defiance. "Ask him, if you do not believe." "Impossible." "He would not say a word to anybody, and I would not have confessed only I was driven to it." "And he forgave you?" "All!"