'I mean all these. Do you or do I deserve trust? Who can possibly know the worthlessness of the other so well as we know it--we two, who are detected accomplices. Would you ill treat me? Why should you not? What reverence or respect have I or you shown for the ties and the rights of marriage that you should observe them towards me, or believe that I would observe them towards you? No, Gustave; a wife who starts fair has little chance in what _was_ our world with a man like you. What chance would a wife have who should face the only world which would give _us_ admittance with a man like you? At least I have learned to calculate _those_ odds since I have been an outsider; at least I have come to know that no loneliness for the future could be so bad as the tremendous and hopeless misery of a marriage with the man who has a right to begin by despising me.' 'You--you utterly reject me, then?' said De Tournefort, in a voice almost inarticulate with anger. 'You think me an utter scoundrel, and you reject me?' 'Let us use no hard words,' said May gently. 'I am not blaming you, or reproaching you, or condemning you, or indeed speaking with any reference to your conduct or character. I am speaking for myself, and of myself, according to my conviction and my unchangeable resolve. Gustave, spare me any more argument or contention, and believe me--I am as firmly determined as ever I was in the days of the self-will which led me to my fate--when I tell you that I will never voluntarily see you, and that I will never, under any circumstances, speak to you again after to-day.' 'I asked you a third question, madam; I asked you whether I am to understand that you no longer love me.' She raised her weary eyes, and looked at him mildly. 'I no longer love you,' she said. 'I cannot remember what love means. You do not understand--no man could understand, I suppose; I don't blame you--the tremendous meaning of what has befallen me. All is changed; the whole of the past is lost and dead to me. Don't mistake me,' she went on earnestly. 'If I did love you, I think I should be too wise to accept your offer. But it is over for ever. And now I must beg you to leave me; I am expecting my lawyer, to tell me the news which you have forestalled him in, and--' A knock at the street-door interrupted her. 'No doubt this is Mr. Patten. Pray leave me.' Gustave de Tournefort went close up to her, and spoke low and rapidly, 'I will leave you. But on the day when the decree is made absolute, you shall receive the same offer from me.' Without another word, without any farewell from her, he left the room, and--having passed Mr. Patten on the stairs--the house. CHAPTER XII. AN ODD FRIENDSHIP.