Fanchon sat quite still, looking at him, her large eyes seeming to grow larger and darker in her white face. He returned the look as steadily, not in anger, but with a kind of grimness new in her experience with him. Neither of them moved, and the stillness in the room was so deep that they both heard the familiar sounds outside. The church clock struck in the distance, and some cocks crowed. The fresh breeze stirred the curtains in the window while the shaded lamp on the table flared up with the little gust. In the flare William saw the misery on his wife’s face. “Fanchon, that man’s pursuing you--he’s a villain! What has happened? Tell me--I have a right to know!” Something in his changed tone touched her. She sank back in her chair, covering her face with her hands. “_Mon Dieu!_” she murmured brokenly, and then, as her emotions swept her away, she burst into wild and uncontrollable weeping, her sobs shaking her from head to foot. Something in the passion of her tears, and in the crumpled helplessness of the small figure in the chair, touched William in his turn. He stood looking at her without moving, thinking unhappily. He had made a mess of it; but after all it wasn’t all her fault. It was his, and he still loved her. From what he had suffered to-night he knew that he loved her. Suddenly he bent over the small, writhing figure and spoke. “Tell me, Fanchon,” he said hoarsely. “Must I thrash that villain?” Very slowly she raised her head, very slowly and reluctantly she raised her tear-drenched eyes to his. “I--I didn’t go with him, I didn’t want to see him--he followed me.” She hesitated, trembling. “I don’t know how to tell you. He overtook me and he made me come back. I’d lost my way. He made me go back to the inn--we ate dinner together.” “You dined at a public road-house with that man--a man I wouldn’t ask to my father’s house?” She nodded, biting her lips. For a moment he was hot with rage; but he curbed it. He wanted to be just, and he was deeply moved. As she sat there she looked as she had looked once in Paris, when he had first seen her--a butterfly of a creature fighting to live, fighting hopelessly in the midst of glittering, sordid surroundings. He hadn’t been blinded, his eyes had been wide open, but he had fallen in love with her; and he had been moved, too, by compassion. He had snatched her out of that gay, hollow sham of a life, and he had meant to save her, to keep her safe. Yet, as she sat there now, she looked forlorn and helpless and beset. “Fanchon,” he said gravely and gently, “tell me why you did this. You didn’t mean to do it, you didn’t set out to do it--why did you? See, I trust you--I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”