“It is a question propounded to me so often that it must contain the truth,” said he.  “My rearing is to blame for that.”

She tightened her clutch about his neck even as he would have attempted to disengage himself from her embrace.

“You do not blame me for your rearing?  Knowing all, as you do, Andre-Louis, you cannot altogether blame.  You must be merciful to me.  You must forgive me.  You must!  I had no choice.”

“When we know all of whatever it may be, we can never do anything but forgive, madame.  That is the profoundest religious truth that was ever written.  It contains, in fact, a whole religion — the noblest religion any man could have to guide him.  I say this for your comfort, madame my mother.”

She sprang away from him with a startled cry.  Beyond him in the shadows by the door a pale figure shimmered ghostly.  It advanced into the light, and resolved itself into Aline.  She had come in answer to that forgotten summons madame had sent her by Jacques.  Entering unperceived she had seen Andre-Louis in the embrace of the woman whom he addressed as “mother.”  She had recognized him instantly by his voice, and she could not have said what bewildered her more:  his presence there or the thing she overheard.

“You heard, Aline?” madame exclaimed.

“I could not help it, madame.  You sent for me.  I am sorry if... " She broke off, and looked at Andre-Louis long and curiously.  She was pale, but quite composed.  She held out her hand to him.  “And so you have come at last, Andre,” said she.  “You might have come before.”

“I come when I am wanted,” was his answer.  “Which is the only time in which one can be sure of being received.”  He said it without bitterness, and having said it stooped to kiss her hand.

“You can forgive me what is past, I hope, since I failed of my purpose,” he said gently, half-pleading.  “I could not have come to you pretending that the failure was intentional — a compromise between the necessities of the case and your own wishes.  For it was not that.  And yet, you do not seem to have profited by my failure.  You are still a maid.”

She turned her shoulder to him.

“There are things,” she said, “that you will never understand.”

“Life, for one,” he acknowledged.  “I confess that I am finding it bewildering.  The very explanations calculated to simplify it seem but to complicate it further.”  And he looked at Mme. de Plougastel.

“You mean something, I suppose,” said mademoiselle.

“Aline!” It was the Countess who spoke.  She knew the danger of half-discoveries.  “I can trust you, child, I know, and Andre-Louis, I am sure, will offer no objection.”  She had taken up the letter to show it to Aline.  Yet first her eyes questioned him.

“Oh, none, madame,” he assured her.  “It is entirely a matter for yourself.”

Aline looked from one to the other with troubled eyes, hesitating to take the letter that was now proffered.  When she had read it through, she very thoughtfully replaced it on the table.  A moment she stood there with bowed head, the other two watching her.  Then impulsively she ran to madame and put her arms about her.