"
"Oh, no," he replied, wagging his Napoleonic head. "Anastasius
Papadopoulos is never mistaken. She told me so herself. She wept. She
put her beautiful arms round my neck and sobbed on my shoulder."
I found myself reproving him gently. "You should not have told me this,
my dear Professor. Such confidences are locked up in the heart of _un
galant homme_, and are not revealed even to his dearest friend."
But my voice sounded hollow in my own ears, and what he said for the
next few minutes I do not remember. The little man had told the truth to
me, and Lola had told the truth to him. The realisation of it paralysed
me. Why had I been such a fool as not to see it for myself? Memories of
a hundred indications came tumbling one after another into my head--the
forgotten glove, the glances, the changes of mood, the tears when she
learned of my illness, the mysterious words, the abrupt little "You?" of
yesterday. The woman was in love, deeply in love, in love with all the
fervour of her big nature. And I had stood by and wondered what she
meant by this and by that--things that would have been obvious to a
coalheaver.
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