feeling infected him too. He saw the smile, and a strange misapprehension came over him.

“She is smiling at my suspicions. Yes, she will tell me directly what she told me before; that there is no foundation for my suspicions, that it’s absurd.”

At that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging over him, there was nothing he expected so much as that she would answer mockingly as before that his suspicions were absurd and utterly groundless. So terrible to him was what he knew that now he was ready to believe anything. But the expression of her face, scared and gloomy, did not now promise even deception.

“Possibly I was mistaken,” said he. “If so, I beg your pardon.”

“No, you were not mistaken,”