"Ah, yes; you try to forget by surrounding yourself with everything that can help you to remember. It is a strange manner of setting about it. I have come here to fetch you, to beg you to come to my sister's in the country. I will take you there. Come and breathe the pure air in the fields, come and see the apple trees in blossom--it will put new joy into your heart." "Oh, it would be quite impossible now ... later on, perhaps.... I do not say no." The conversation did not take the turn that Lorimer wished. "Listen," said he, in the tone of a man who has taken a sudden resolution, "I want to speak to you upon a rather delicate subject, but you must not stop me. You have just forbidden me to mention the name of your husband before you. Very well, I will not mention his name, but I am going to make you acquainted with certain facts which you ought no longer to be ignorant of. I do not come here to plead in his favour, and yet, as even the blackest criminal is not executed without a chance of defending himself, I really do not see what there would be outrageous, even in that. Will you listen a few moments?" "Very well! Go on," said Dora indifferently. "I saw him yesterday--for that matter, I have seen him almost every day since he came back to London." "Where has he been?" asked Dora, with but a mild display of interest. "To Paris." "He often goes over--I mean he often used to go." "The last time he went there, an incident happened which it seems to me ought to interest you. He went to seek out General Sabaroff. He found him, tore up before his eyes the paper that he had signed in your house, and threw the pieces in his face." "Heavens!" said Dora, startled, "and what happened then?" "The next morning they fought with pistols--in the Bois de Vincennes--your husband lodged a bullet in the General's right shoulder." Dora did not attempt to hide the feeling of joy and pride that involuntarily rose within her. "Philip was always a good shot--he himself was not hurt?" "No--you will allow me now to pronounce your husband's name, since you have used it yourself." Dora frowned and bit her lips. "At all events, the contract is torn up!" she cried. "God be praised! I paid dearly enough for that vile piece of paper--I have a right to rejoice that it no longer exists. Philip did well, he did well. And after that?" "Why, that is all--ah, no, I was forgetting. Philip begged me to hand you this letter--and this packet." Dora went pale; she put the packet aside, and was going to tear up the letter when Lorimer interrupted-- "What are you going to do?" said he. "Tear up this letter? You will do nothing of the kind: that letter is from Philip, from your husband." "My dear Gerald, my husband no longer exists for me." "Dora," rejoined Lorimer, "you are cruel. Your husband loves you, and is overwhelmed with sorrow." "My husband never loved me. I thought he loved his art and his wife, he only loved his invention and his money."