Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/265

 'Because she's mad with love of you,' said Jill.

'I know that. She was glad to tell me, of course. But it wasn't jealousy. No; you'd have believed her if you had heard her. She was very angry with me for calling her penitent a courtesan. For she is reformed, it seems.'

'You believe it, because you've been like that yourself, Dick. You've been bad in that way and that's why you are able to believe it of Marthe.'

That was why, perhaps—Graham saw it in a sudden uncanny flash of insight, helped by Jill—he had heard that bitterness come into his own voice just now. The unchaste man can feel no spiritual tolerance for the unchaste woman.

'If it's true, in any way true,' Jill went on, weighing her words, 'it isn't in any way that you or Madame de Lamouderie could understand.'

'Draw it mild, Jill,' Graham muttered. 'I'm not such a satyr as all that.'

'No; you're not a satyr. But you believe that Marthe has been mauled about by horrible Frenchmen!—' Jill's voice broke at last; sobs came into it. He turned, slowly, to look at her. She was lying back on her pillow with burning cheeks, her eyes closed. And though the sobs had come she mastered them. Her chest heaved and was quiet again. 'Poor Dick,' she said.

It was so strangely that she said it that his heart stood still. She said it as if she understood all.

'I've made you ill. I've been a fool,' he muttered, not approaching her.