"You knew that I'd once been deceived by a woman," he said. "Her name doesn't matter. She deceived me, and my love for her died--as surely as a man dies if you stab him to the heart. She stabbed my love--and it died, and I swore then that I would give no other woman the power to hurt me as she had hurt me. When I met you I knew, almost at once, that you were a woman whom--if I allowed myself to--I might grow to love. I think it was your sincerity, your transparent honesty that won me. You were all I'd dreamed of in a woman--all that I hadn't found in that other woman. But I was afraid. So I left Montricheux--went away at once. I didn't want to care for you. I'd been too badly hit before. Cowardly, you'll say, perhaps--you were never a coward, were you, Ann? Well, it may have been. Anyhow, I did go away and I tried to forget all about you. It wasn't easy, God knows, and then, by a trick of fate, I found you again, at my cottage--living there, sister of the man with whom I'd just made a pact. After that it was a struggle between my joy at finding you there and my determination never to let myself care again for any woman." He paused, but Ann did not speak, and after a minute he went on again: "Well, you know how it ended. I was beaten. I loved you and I had to tell you so. When I yielded, I yielded entirely--gave you my utter love and faith. I believed in you completely--far more than I knew or even suspected at the time. And then, close on the top of that, I was told the story of how you had stayed at the Dents de Loup with Tony Brabazon. Even then I could hardly credit it. I came and asked you. And you didn't deny it. It was true. What else could I think? I argued that you had thrown Brabazon over because I was a better 'catch' from, a worldly point of view--just as that other woman had thrown me over for a similar reason!--that you'd deliberately deceived me, that you'd been faithless both to Brabazon and to me, as you would be faithless to any other man who loved you.... Remember, it had been your seeming sincerity, your truth, your _straightness_ which had first attracted me. And just as I had loved you for your truth, so then I hated you for your falseness--your unbelievable falseness.... Why didn't you deny it all, Ann? Explain--clear the mists away from my eyes?" "I was too proud--and hurt," she said quiveringly. "If you'd only stooped to explain--" He broke off, with a savage gesture. "Forgive me! What right have I to reproach or blame you? The whole fault was mine. Well, I believed you as disloyal and disingenuous as I had known you to be loyal and candid. And I went away. I went down into hell. You've at least the satisfaction of knowing that I paid for my distrust--paid for it to the last fraction owing--" "Ah, don't!" She raised her hand swiftly, imploringly. But he took no notice. He continued doggedly: