"Quite so; but, unfortunately, what is conventionally known as a repentant woman is not the sort of person I would have chosen to be near my child."
She rose, wearily, dragging herself toward the desk. "Now that I've heard your opinion of me," she said, quietly, "I suppose you have no reason for detaining me any longer."
"Have you nothing to say in your own defence?"
"You haven't asked me to say anything. You've tried and condemned me unheard. Since you adopt that method of justice I'm forced to abide by it. I'm not like a person who has rights or who can claim protection from any outside authority. You're not only judge and jury to me, but my final court of appeal. I must take what you mete out to me--and bear it."
"I don't want to be hard on you," he groaned.
"No; I can believe that. I dare say the situation is just as cruel for you as for me. When circumstances become so entangled that you can't explain them, everybody has to suffer."
"I'm glad you can do me that justice. My life for the past week--ever since Bienville began to talk to me--has been hell."
"I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry to have brought it on you. I'm afraid, too, that the future may be harder for you still; for no man can do a woman such wrong as you're doing me, and not pay for it."
"Wrong? Can you honestly say I'm doing you wrong, Diane? Isn't it true--you'll pardon me if I put my questions bluntly, the circumstances don't permit of sparing either your feelings or my own--isn't it true that for two or three years before your husband's death your name in Paris was nothing short of a byword?"
"I'm not sure of what you mean by a byword. I acknowledge that I braved public opinion, and that much ill was said of me--often, more than I deserved."
"Isn't it true that your name was connected with that of a man called Lalanne, and that he was killed in a duel on your account?"
"It's true that Monsieur Lalanne made love to me; it's also true that he was killed in a duel; but it's not true that it was on my account. The instance is an excellent illustration of the degree to which the true and the false are mixed in Parisian gossip--perhaps in all gossip--and a woman's reputation blasted. Unhappily for me, I felt myself young and strong enough to be indifferent to reputation. I treated it with the neglect one often bestows upon one's health--not thinking that there would come a day of reckoning."