Page:The Saint (1906, G. P. Putnam's Sons).djvu/118

84 to say. "Perhaps it is better for you to know, that you may no longer cherish a false hope; better for you to have seen him in that habit."

This time an answer came between the sobs, "No, no!" Jeanne repeated passionately and vehemently many times, and the tone, though hardly sorrowful, was so strange that Noemi was greatly puzzled. She resumed her soothing, but more timidly now.

"Yes, dear! yes, dear! because knowing there is no help"

Jeanne raised her tear-stained face, "Do you not understand? It is not he!" she said.

Noemi drew away from her embrace, amazed,

"What do you mean? Not he—! All this scene because it is not he?"

Jeanne again fell upon her neck.

"The monk who passed me, is not he," she said sobbing; "it is the other man!"

"What other man?"

"The one who was following him, who went away with him!"

Noemi had not even noticed this person. With a convulsive laugh Jeanne nearly suffocated her in a close embrace.