The Eye of Dread

“Forgotten?” Robert was mystified until he realized in the instant that she was pretending to a former acquaintance. “Could I forget, mademoiselle? Permit me.” He lifted his glass. “To your eyes–and to your–memory,” he said, and drank it off.

After that he became the gayest of them all, and the merriment never flagged. He ate heartily, for he was very hungry, but he drank sparingly. His brain seemed supplied with intellectual missiles which he hurled right and left, but when they struck, it was only to send out a rain of sparks like the balls of holiday fireworks that explode in a fountain of brilliance and hurt no one.

“Monsieur is so gay!” said the soft voice of the blonde at his side.

“Are we not here for that, to enjoy ourselves?”

“Ah, if I could but believe that you remember me!”

“Is it possible mademoiselle thinks herself one to be so easily forgotten?”

“Monsieur, tell me the truth.” She glanced up archly. “I have one very good reason for asking.”

“You are very beautiful.”

“But that is so banal–that remark.”

“You complain that I tell you the truth when you ask it? You have so often heard it that the telling becomes banal? Shall I continue?”

“But it is of yourself that I would hear.”

“So? Then it is as I feared. It is you who have forgotten.”

They were interrupted at that moment, for he was called upon for a story, and he related one of his life as a soldier,–a little incident, but everything pleased. They called upon him for another and another. The hour grew late, and at last the banqueters rose and began to remask and assume their various characters.

“What are you, monsieur, with that very strange dress that you wear, a Roman or a Greek?” asked his companion.

“I really don’t know–a sort of nondescript. I did not choose my costume; it was made up for me by my friends. They called me Mark Antony, but that was because they did not know what else to call me. But they promised me Cleopatra if I would come with them.”

“They would have done better to call you Petrarch, for I am Laura.”

“But I never could have taken that part. I could make a very decent sort of ass of myself, but not a poet.”

“What a very terrible voice your Lady Macbeth has!”

“Yes; but she was a terror, you know. Shall we follow the rest?”

They all trooped out of the café, and fiacres were called to take them to the house where the mask was held. The women were placed in their respective carriages, but the men walked. At the door of the house, as they entered the ballroom, they reunited, but again were soon scattered. Robert Kater wandered about, searching here and there for his very elusive Laura, so slim and elegant in her white and gold draperies, who seemed to be greatly in demand. He saw many whom he recognized; some by their carriage, some by their voices, but Laura baffled him. Had he ever seen her before? He could not remember. He would not have forgotten her–never. No, she was amusing herself with him.

“Monsieur does not dance?” It was a Spanish gypsy with her lace mantilla and the inevitable red rose in her hair. He knew the voice. It was that of a little model he sometimes employed.

“I dance, yes. But I will only take you out on the floor, my little Julie,–ha–ha–I know you, never fear–I will take you out on the floor, but on one condition.”

“It is granted before I know it.”

“Then tell me, who is she just passing?”

“The one whose clothing is so–so–as if she would pose for the–”

“Hush, Julie. The one in white and gold.”

“I asked if it were she. Yes, I know her very well, for I saw a gentleman unmask her on the balcony above there, to kiss her. It is she who dances so wonderfully at the Opéra Comique. You have seen her, Mademoiselle Fée. Ah, come. Let us dance. It is the most perfect waltz.”

At the close of the waltz the owl came and took the little gypsy away from Robert, and a moment later he heard the mellifluous voice of his companion of the banquet.

“I am so weary, monsieur. Take me away where we may refresh ourselves.”

The red-brown eyes looked pleadingly into his, and the slender fingers rested on his arm, and together they wandered to a corner of palms where he seated her and brought her cool wine jelly and other confections. She thanked him sweetly, and, drooping, she rested her head upon her hand and her arm on the arm of her chair.

“So dull they are, these fêtes, and the people–bah! They are dull to the point of despair.”

She was a dream of gold and white as she sat there–the red-gold hair and the red-brown eyes, and the soft gold and white draperies, too clinging, as the little gypsy had indicated, but beautiful as a gold and white lily. He sat beside her and gazed on her dreamily, but in a manner too detached. She was not pleased, and she sighed.

“Take the refreshment, mademoiselle; you will feel better. I will bring you wine. What will you have?”

“Oh, you men, who always think that to eat and drink something alone can refresh! Have you never a sadness?”

“Very often, mademoiselle.”

“Then what do you do?”

“I eat and drink, mademoiselle. Try it.”

“Oh, you strange man from the cold north! You make me shiver. Touch my hand. See? You have made me cold.”

“Cold? You are a flame from the crown of gold on your head to your shoes of gold.”

“Now that you are become a success, monsieur, what will you do? To you is given the heart’s desire.” She toyed with the quivering jelly, merely tasting it. It too was golden in hue, and golden lights danced in the heart of it.

“A great success? I am dreaming. It is so new to me that I do not believe it.”

“You are very clever, monsieur. You never tell your thoughts. I asked if you remembered me and you answered in a riddle. I knew you did not, for you never saw me before.”

“Did I never see you dance?”

“Ah, there you are again! To see me dance–in a great audience–one of many? That does not count. You but pretended.”

He leaned forward, looking steadily in her eyes. “Did I but pretend when I said I never could forget you? Ah, mademoiselle, you are too modest.”

She was maddened that she could not pique him to a more ardent manner, but gave no sign by so much as the quiver of an eyelid. She only turned her profile toward him indifferently. He noticed the piquant line of her lips and chin and throat, and the golden tones of her delicate skin.

“Did I not also tell you the truth when you asked me? And you rewarded me by calling me banal.”

“And I was right. You, who are so clever, could think of something better to say.” She gave him a quick glance, and placed a quivering morsel of jelly between her lips. “But you are so very strange to me. Tell me, were you never in love?”

“That is a question I may not answer.” He still smiled, but it was merely the continuation of the smile he had worn before she shot that last arrow. He still looked in her eyes, but she knew he was not seeing her. Then he rallied and laughed. “Come, question for question. Were you never in love–or out of love–let us say?”

“Oh! Me!” She lifted her shoulders delicately. “Me! I am in love now–at this moment. You do not treat me well. You have not danced with me once.”

“No. You have been dancing always, and fully occupied. How could I?”

“Ah, you have not learned. To dance with me–you must take me, not stand one side and wait.”

“Are you engaged for the next?”

“But, yes. It is no matter. I will dance it with you. He will be consoled.” She laughed, showing her beautiful, even teeth. “I make you a confession. I said to him, ‘I will dance it with you unless the cold monsieur asks me–then I will dance with him, for it will do him good.’”

Robert Kater rose and stood a moment looking through the palms. The silken folds of his toga fell gracefully around him, and he held his head high. Then he withdrew his eyes from the distance and turned them again on her,–the gold and white being at his feet,–and she seemed to him no longer human, but a phantom from which he must flee, if but he might do so courteously, for he knew her to be no phantom, and he could not be other than courteous.

“Will you accept from me my laurel crown?” He took the chaplet from his head and laid it at her feet. Then, lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed the tips of her pink fingers, bowing low before her. “I go to send you wine. Console your partner. It is better so, for I too am in love.” He smiled upon her as he had smiled at first, and was gone, walking out through the crowd–the weird, fantastic, bizarre company, as if he were no part of them. One and another greeted him as he passed, but he did not seem to hear them. He called a waiter and ordered wine to be taken to Mademoiselle Fée, and quickly was gone. They saw him no more.

It was nearly morning. A drizzling rain was falling, and the air was chill after the heat of the crowded ballroom. He drew it into his lungs in deep draughts, glad to be out in the freshness, and to feel the cool rain on his forehead. He threw off his encumbering toga and walked in his tunic, with bare throat and bare knees, and carried the toga over one bare arm, and swung the other bare arm free. He walked with head held high, for he was seeing visions, and hearing a far-distant call. Now at last he might choose his path. He had not failed, but with that call from afar–what should he do? Should he answer it? Was it only a call from out his own heart–a passing, futile call, luring him back?

Of one thing he was sure. There was the painting on which he had labored and staked his all now hanging in the Salon. He could see it, one of his visions realized,–David and Saul. The deep, rich shadows, the throne, the tiger skin, the sandaled feet of the remorseful king resting on the great fanged and leering head, the eyes of the king looking hungrily out from under his forbidding brows, the cruel lips pressed tightly together, and the lithe, thin hands grasping the carved arms of the throne in fierce restraint,–all this in the deep shadows between the majestic carved columns, their bases concealed by the rich carpet covering the dais and their tops lost in the brooding darkness above–the lowering darkness of purple gloom that only served to reveal the sinister outlines of the somber, sorrowful, suffering king, while he indulged the one pure passion left him–listening–gazing from the shadows out into the light, seeing nothing, only listening.

And before him, standing in the one ray of light, clothed only in his tunic of white and his sandals, a human jewel of radiant color and slender strength, a godlike conception of youth and grace, his harp before him, the lilies crushed under his feet that he had torn from the strings which his fingers touched caressingly, with sunlight in his crown of golden, curling hair and the light of the stars in his eyes–David, the strong, the simple, the trusting, the God-fearing youth, as Robert Kater saw him, looking back through the ages.

Ah, now he could live. Now he could create–work: he had been recognized, and rewarded–Dust and ashes! Dust and ashes! The hope of his life realized, the goblet raised to his lips, and the draft–bitter. The call falling upon his heart–imperative–beseeching–what did it mean?

Slowly and heavily he mounted the stairs to his studio, and there fumbled about in the darkness and the confusion left by his admiring comrades until he found candles and made a light. He was cold, and his light clothing clung to him wet and chilling as grave clothes. He tore them off and got himself into things that were warm and dry, and wrapping himself in an old dressing gown of flannel, sat down to think.

He took the money his friend had brought him and counted it over. Good old Ben Howard! Half of it must go to him, of course. And here were finished canvases quite as good as the ones that had sold. Ben might turn them to as good an account as the others,–yes,–here was enough to carry him through a year and leave him leisure to paint unhampered by the necessity of making pot boilers for a bare living.

“Tell me, were you never in love?” That soft, insinuating voice haunted him against his will. In love? What did she know of love–the divine passion? Love! Fame! Neither were possible to him. He bowed his head upon the table, hiding his face, crushing the bank notes beneath his arms. Deep in his soul the eye of his own conscience regarded him,–an outcast hiding under an assumed name, covering the scar above his temple with a falling lock of hair seldom lifted, and deep in his soul a memory of a love. Oh, God! Dust and ashes! Dust and ashes!

He rose, and, taking his candle with him, opened a door leading from the studio up a short flight of steps to a little cupboard of a sleeping room. Here he cast himself on the bed and closed his eyes. He must sleep: but no, he could not. After a time of restless tossing he got up and drew an old portmanteau from the closet and threw the contents out on the bed. From among them he picked up the thing he sought and sat on the edge of his bed with it in his hands, turning it over and regarding it, tieing and untieing the worn, frayed, but still bright ribbons, which had once been the cherry-colored hair ribbons of little Betty Ballard.

Suddenly he rose and lifted his head high, in his old, rather imperious way, put out his candle, and looked through the small, dusty panes of his window. It was day–early dawn. He was jaded and weary, but he would try no longer to sleep. He must act, and shake off sentimentalism. Yes, he must act. He bathed and dressed with care, and then in haste, as if life depended on hurry, he packed the portmanteau and stepped briskly into the studio, looking all about, noting everything as if taking stock of it all, then sat down with pen and paper to write.

The letter was a long one. It took time and thought. When he was nearly through with it, Ben Howard lagged wearily in.

“Halloo! Why didn’t you wait for me? What did you clear out for and leave me in the lurch? Fresh as a daisy, you are, old chap, and I’m done for, dead.”

“You’re not scientific in your pleasures.” Robert Kater lifted his eyes and looked at his friend. “Are you alive enough to hear me and remember what I say? Will you do something for me? Shall I tell you now or will you breakfast first?”

“Breakfast? Faugh!” He looked disgustedly around him.

“I’m sorry. You drink too much. Listen, Ben. I’ll tell you what I mean to do and what I wish you to do for me–and–you remember all you can of it, will you? I must do it now, for you’ll be asleep soon, and this will be the last I shall see of you–ever. I’m leaving in two hours–as soon as I’ve breakfasted.”

“What’s that? Hold on!” Ben Howard sprang up, and darting behind a screen where they washed their brushes, he dashed cold water over his head and came back toweling himself. “I’m fit now. I did drink too much champagne, but I’ll sleep it off. Now fire away,–what’s up?”

“In two hours I’ll be en route for the coast, and to-morrow I’ll take passage for home on the first boat.” Robert closed and sealed the long letter he had been writing and tossed it on the table. “I want this mailed one week from to-day. Put it in your pocket so you won’t lose it among the rubbish here. One week from to-day it must be mailed. It’s to my great aunt, Jean Craigmile, who gave me the money to set up here the first year. I’ve paid that up–last week–with my last sou–and with interest. By rights she should have whatever there is here of any value, for, if it were not for her help, there would not have been a thing here anyway, and I’ve no one else to whom to leave it–so see that this letter is mailed without fail, will you?”

The Englishman stood, now thoroughly awake, gazing at him, unable to make common sense out of Robert’s remarks. “B–b–but–what’s up? What are you leaving things to anybody for? You’re not on your deathbed.”

“I’m going home, don’t you see?”

“But why don’t you take the letter to her yourself–if you’re going home?”

“Not there, man; not to Scotland.”

“Your home’s there.”

“I have allowed you to think so.” Robert forced himself to talk calmly. “In truth, I have no home, but the place I call home by courtesy is where I was brought up–in America.”

“You–you–d–d–don’t–”

“Yes–it’s time you knew this. I’ve been leading a double life, and I’m done with it. I committed a crime, and I’m living under an assumed name. There is no such man as Robert Kater that I know of on earth, nor ever was. My name is–no matter–. I’m going back to the place where I killed my best friend–to give myself up–to imprisonment–I do not know to what–maybe death–but it will end my torture of mind. Now you know why I could not go to the Vernissage, to be treated–well, I could not go, that’s all. Nor could I accept the honors given me under a name not my own. All the time I’ve lived in Paris I’ve been hiding–and this thing has been following me–although my occupation seems to have been the best cover I could have had–yet my soul has known no peace. Always–always–night and day–my own conscience has been watching and accusing me, an eye of dread steadily gazing down into my soul and seeing my sin deep, deep in my heart. I could not hide from it. And I would have given up before only that I wished to make good in something before I stepped down and out. I’ve done it.” He put his hand heavily on Ben Howard’s shoulder. “I’ve had a revelation this night. The lesson of my life is learned at last. It is, that there is but one road to freedom and life for me–and that road leads to a prison. It leads to a prison,–maybe worse,–but it leads me to freedom–from the thing that haunts me, that watches me and drives me. I may write you from that place which I will call home–Were you ever in love?”

The abruptness of the question set Ben Howard stammering again. He seized Robert’s hand in both his own and held to it. “I–I–I–old chap–I–n–n–no–were you?”

“Yes; I’ve heard the call of her voice in my heart–and I’m gone. Now, Ben, stop your–well, I’ll not preach to you, you of all men,–but–do something worth while. I’ve need of part of the money you got for me–to get back on–and pay a bill or two–and the rest I leave to you–there where you put it you’ll find it. Will you live here and take care of these things for me until my good aunt, Jean Craigmile, writes you? She’ll tell you what to do with them–and more than likely she’ll take you under her wing–anyway, work, man, work. The place is yours for the present–perhaps for a good while, and you’ll have a chance to make good. If I could live on that money for a year, as you yourself said, you can live on half of it for half a year, and in that time you can get ahead. Work.”

He seized his portmanteau and was gone before Ben Howard could gather his scattered senses or make reply.

CHAPTER XXXII
THE PRISONER

Harry King did not at once consult an attorney, for Milton Hibbard, the only one he knew or cared to call upon for his defense, was an old friend of the Elder’s and had been retained by him to assist the district attorney at the trial. The other two lawyers in Leauvite, one of whom was the district attorney himself, were strangers to him. Twice he sent messages to the Elder after his return, begging him to come to him, never dreaming that they could be unheeded, but to the second only was any reply sent, and then it was but a cursory line. “Legal steps will be taken to secure justice for you, whoever you are.”

To his friends he sent no messages. Their sympathy could only mean sorrow for them if they believed in him, and hurt to his own soul if they distrusted him, and he suffered enough. So he lay there in the clean, bare cell, and was glad that it was clean and held no traces of former occupants. The walls smelled of lime in their freshly plastered surfaces, and the floor had the pleasant odor of new pine.

His life passed in review before him from boyhood up. It had been a happy life until the tragedy brought into it by his own anger and violence, but since that time it had been one long nightmare of remorse, heightened by fear, until he had met Amalia, and after that it had been one unremitting strife between love and duty–delight in her mind, in her touch, in her every movement, and in his own soul despair unfathomable. Now at last it was to end in public exposure, imprisonment, disgrace. A peculiar apathy of peace seemed to envelop him. There was no longer hope to entice, no further struggle to be waged against the terror of fear, or the joy of love, or the horror of remorse; all seemed gone from him, even to the vague interest in things transpiring in the world.

He had only a puzzled feeling concerning his arrest. Things had not proceeded as he had planned. If the Elder would but come to him, all would be right. He tried to analyze his feelings, and the thought that possessed him most was wonder at the strange vacuity of the condition of emotionlessness. Was it that he had so suffered that he was no longer capable of feeling? What was feeling? What was emotion: and life without either emotion, or feeling, or caring to feel,–what would it be?

Valueless.–Empty space. Nothing left but bodily hunger, bodily thirst, bodily weariness. A lifetime, for his years were not yet half spent,–a lifetime at Waupun, and work for the body, but vacuity for the mind–maybe–sometimes–memories. Even thinking thus he seemed to have lost the power to feel sadness.

Confusion reigned within him, and yet he found himself powerless to correlate his thoughts or suggest reasons for the strange happenings of the last few days. It seemed to him that he was in a dream wherein reason played no part. In the indictment he was arraigned for the murder of Peter Craigmile, Jr.,–as Richard Kildene,–and yet he had seen his cousin lying dead before him, during all the years that had passed since he had fled from that sight. In battle he had seen men clubbed with the butt end of a musket fall dead with wounded temples, even as he had seen his cousin–stark–inert–lifeless. He had felt the strange, insane rage to kill that he had seen in others and marveled at. And now, after he had felt and done it, he was arrested as the man he had slain.

All the morning he paced his cell and tried to force his thoughts to work out the solution, but none presented itself. Was he the victim of some strange form of insanity that caused him to lose his identity and believe himself another man? Drunken men he had seen under the delusion that all the rest of the world were drunken and they alone sober. Oh, madness, madness! At least he was sane and knew himself, and this was a confusion brought about by those who had undertaken his arrest. He would wait for the Elder to come, and in the meantime live in his memories, thinking of Amalia, and so awaken in himself one living emotion, sacred and truly sane. In the sweetness of such thinking alone he seemed to live.

He drew the little ivory crucifix from his bosom and looked at it. “The Christ who bore our sins and griefs”–and again Amalia’s words came to him. “If they keep you forever in the prison, still forever are you free.” In snatches her words repeated themselves over in his mind as he gazed. “If you have the Christ in your heart–so are you high–lifted above the sin.” “If I see you no more here, in Paradise yet will I see you, and there it will be joy–great–joy; for it is the love that is all of life, and all of eternity, and lives–lives.”

Bertrand Ballard and his wife and daughter stood in the small room opening off from the corridor that led to the rear of the courthouse where was the jail, waiting for the jailer to bring his keys from his office, and, waiting thus, Betty turned her eyes beseechingly on her father, and for the first time since her talk with her mother in the studio, opened her lips to speak to him. She was very pale, but she did not tremble, and her voice had the quality of determination. Bertrand had yielded the point and had taken her to the jail against his own judgment, taking Mary with him to forestall the chance of Betty’s seeing the young man alone. “Surely,” he thought, “she will not ask to have her mother excluded from the interview.”

“I don’t want any one–not even you–or–or–mother, to go in with me.”

“My child, be wise–and be guided.”

“Yes, father,–but I want to go in alone.” She slipped her hand in her mother’s, but still looked in her father’s eyes. “I must go in alone, father. You don’t understand–but mother does.”

“This young man may be an impostor. It is almost unmaidenly for you to wish to go in there alone. Mary–”

But Mary hesitated and trusted to her daughter’s intuition. “Betty, explain yourself,” was all she said.

“Suppose it was father–or you thought it might be father–and a terrible thing were hanging over him and you had not seen him for all this time–and he were in there, and I were you–wouldn’t you ask to see him first alone? Would you stop for one moment to think about being proper? What do I care! If he is an impostor, I shall know it. In one moment I shall know it. I–I–just want to see him alone. It is because he has suffered so long–that is why he has come like this–if–they aren’t accusing him wrongfully, and I–he will tell me the truth. If he is Richard, I would know it if I came in and stood beside him blindfolded. I will call you in a moment. Stand by the door, and let me see him alone.”

The jailer returned, alert and important, shaking the keys in his hand. “This way, please.”

In the moment’s pause of unlocking, Betty again turned upon her father, her eyes glowing in the dim light of the corridor with wide, sorrowful gaze, large and irresistibly earnest. Bertrand glanced from her to his wife, who slightly nodded her head. Then he said to the surprised jailer: “We will wait here. My daughter may be able to recognize him. Call us quickly, dear, if you have reason to change your mind.” The heavy door was closed behind her, and the key turned in the lock.

Harry King loomed large and tall in the small room, standing with his back to the door and his face lifted to the small window, where he could see a patch of the blue sky and white, scudding clouds. For the moment his spirit was not in that cell. It was free and on top of a mountain, looking into the clear eyes of a woman who loved him. He was so rapt in his vision that he did not hear the grating of the key in the lock, and Betty stood abashed, with her back to the door, feeling that she was gazing on a stranger. Relieved against the square of light, his hair looked darker than she remembered Peter’s ever to have been,–as dark as Richard’s, but that rough, neglected beard,–also dark,–and the tanned skin, did not bring either young man to her mind.

The pause was but for a moment, when he became aware that he was not alone and turned and saw her there.

“Betty! oh, Betty! You have come to help me.” He walked toward her slowly, hardly believing his eyes, and held out both hands.

“If–I–can. Who are you?” She took his hands in hers and walked around him, turning his face to the light. Her breath came and went quickly, and a round red spot now burned on one of her cheeks, and her face seemed to be only two great, pathetic eyes.

“Do I need to tell you, Betty? Once we thought we loved each other. Did we, Betty?”

“I don’t–don’t–know–Peter! Oh, Peter! Oh, you are alive! Peter! Richard didn’t kill you!” She did not cry out, but spoke the words with a low intensity that thrilled him, and then she threw her arms about his neck and burst into tears. “He didn’t do it! You are alive! Peter, he didn’t kill you! I knew he didn’t do it. They all thought he did, and–and–your father–he has almost broken his bank just–just–hunting for Richard–to–to–have him hung–and oh! Peter, I have lived in horror,–for–fear he w–w–w–would, and–”

“He never could, Betty. I have come home to atone. I have come home to give myself up. I killed Richard–my cousin–my best friend. I struck him in hate and saw him lying dead: all the time they were hunting him it was I they should have hunted. I can’t understand it. Did they take his dead body for mine–or–how was it they did not know he was struck down and murdered? They must have taken his body for mine–or–he must have fallen over–but he didn’t, for I saw him lying dead as I had struck him. All these years the eye of vengeance has been upon me, and my crime has haunted me. I have seen him lying so–dead. God! God!”

Betty still clung to him and sobbed incoherently. “No, no, Peter, it was you who were drowned–they found all your things and saw where you had been pushed over, and–but you weren’t drowned! They only thought it–they believed it–”

He put his hand to his head as if to brush away the confusion which staggered him. “Yes, Richard lay dead–and they found him,–but why did they hunt for him? And I–I–living–why didn’t they hunt me,–and he, dead and lying there–why did they hunt him? But my father would believe the worst of him rather than to see himself disgraced in his son. Don’t cry, little Betty, don’t cry. You’ve had too much to bear. Sit here beside me and I’ll tell you all about it. That’s why I came back.”

“B–b–ut if you weren’t drowned, why–why didn’t you come home and say so? Didn’t you ever see the papers and how they were hunting Richard all over the world? I knew you were dead, because I knew you never would be so cruel as to leave every one in doubt and your father in sorrow–just because he had quarreled with you. It might have killed your mother–if the Elder had let her know.”

“I can’t tell you all my reasons, Betty; mostly they were coward’s reasons. I did my best to leave evidence that I had been pushed over the bluff, because it seemed the only way to hide myself. I did my best to make them think me dead, and never thought any one could be harmed by it, because I knew him to be dead; so I just thought we would both be dead so far as the world would know,–and as for you, dear,–I learned on that fatal night that you did not love me–and that was another coward’s reason why I wished to be dead to you all.” He began pacing the room, and Betty sat on the edge of the narrow jail bedstead and watched him with tearful eyes. “It was true, Betty? You did not really love me?”