“Well, then, I must say thank you,” she said indistinctly, “for you have taught me a great deal.”

“You will unlearn it!” he said gaily, recovering his self-possession, so it seemed, as she lost hers.  “Besides, before many weeks are over you will have heard hard things of me.  I know that very well.  I can say nothing to meet them.  Nor should I attempt anything.  It may sound brazen, but that past of mine, which I can see perpetually present in Aldous Raeburn’s mind, for instance, and which means so much to his good aunt, means to me just nothing at all!  The doctrine of identity must be true—­I must be the same person I was then.  But, all the same, what I did then does not matter a straw to me now.  To all practical purposes I am another man.  I was then a youth, idle, desoeuvre, playing with all the keys of life in turn.  I have now unlocked the path that suits me.  Its quest has transformed me—­as I believe, ennobled me.  I do not ask Raeburn or any one else to believe it.  It is my own affair.  Only, if we ever meet again in life, you and I, and you think you have reason to ask humiliation of me, do not ask it, do not expect it.  The man you will have in your mind has nothing to do with me.  I will not be answerable for his sins.”

As he said these things he was leaning lightly forward, looking up at her, his arms resting on the back of one of the old chairs, one foot crossed over the other.  The attitude was easy calm itself.  The tone—­indomitable, analytic, reflective—­matched it.  Yet, all the same, her woman’s instinct divined a hidden agitation, and, woman-like, responded to that and that only.

“Mr. Raeburn will never tell me old stories about anybody,” she said proudly.  “I asked him once, out—­out of curiosity—­about you, and he would tell me nothing.”

“Generous!” said Wharton, drily.  “I am grateful.”

“No!” cried Marcella, indignantly, rushing blindly at the outlet for emotion.  “No!—­you are not grateful; you are always judging him harshly—­criticising, despising what he does.”

Wharton was silent a moment.  Even in the moonlight she could see the reddening of his cheek.

“So be it,” he said at last.  “I submit.  You must know best.  But you? are you always content?  Does this milieu into which you are passing always satisfy you?  To-night, did your royalty please you? will it soon be enough for you?”

“You know it is not enough,” she broke out, hotly; “it is insulting that you should ask in that tone.  It means that you think me a hypocrite!—­and I have given you no cause—­”

“Good heavens, no!” he exclaimed, interrupting her, and speaking in a low, hurried voice.  “I had no motive, no reason for what I said—­none—­but this, that you are going—­that we are parting.  I spoke in gibes to make you speak—­somehow to strike—­to reach you.  To-morrow it will be too late!”

And before, almost, she knew that he had moved, he had stooped forward, caught a fold of her dress, pressed it to his lips, and dropped it.