But her head was averted: I could gather nothing from the outlines of her form; and I went on.
'Do not misunderstand me,' I said in a lower voice.

'Do not misunderstand what I am going to say next.

This is no love-story; and can have no ending such as romancers love to set to their tales.

But I am bound to mention, Mademoiselle, that this man who had lived almost all his life about inns and eating-houses and at the gaming-tables met here for the first time for years a good woman, and learned by the light of her loyalty and devotion to see what his life had been, and what was the real nature of the work he was doing.

I think--nay, I know,' I continued, 'that it added a hundredfold to his misery that when he learned at last the secret he had come to surprise, he learned it from her lips, and in such a way that, had he felt no shame, Hell could have been no place for him.