It is too late to tell you now."
"Oh, not too late! From what you say they will tell me, I should
think, perhaps, worse of you than you deserve. What is this thing
you hide? What is this mystery? Tell me, monsieur. Tell me."
Did ever woman more plainly tell a man she loved him, and that
loving him she would find all excuses for him? Was ever woman in
better case to hear a confession from the man that loved her, and
of whose love she was assured by every instinct that her sex
possesses in such matters? Those two questions leapt into my mind,
and in resolving them I all but determined to speak even now in
the eleventh hour.
And then - I know not how - a fresh barrier seemed to arise. It
was not merely a matter of telling her of the wager I was embarked
upon; not merely a matter of telling her of the duplicity that I
had practised, of the impostures by which I had gained admittance
to her father's confidence and trust; not merely a matter of
confessing that I was not Lesperon. There would still be the
necessity of saying who I was. Even if she forgave all else, could
she forgive me for being Bardelys the notorious Bardelys, the
libertine, the rake, some of whose exploits she had heard of from
her mother, painted a hundred times blacker than they really were?
Might she not shrink from me when I told her I was that man? In
her pure innocence she deemed, no doubt, that the life of every
man who accounted himself a gentleman was moderately clean.
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