“I have been walking about all night,” he said.
“Walking?” Yola questioned in surprise.
“I wanted to think. God knows where I went, but I stood for a long time beside the Seine, seeing your face in the water.”
“I-I do not – understand.”
“I know that,” the Marquis answered. “And I know, as I have always known, what you were thinking last night and what you felt.”
She did not speak, but she clasped her fingers together in her lap.
“That is why I want to give you an explanation,” the Marquis went on, “to try to make you understand why I behaved as I did.”
There was a note in his voice that Yola did not recognise and she glanced at him and then looked away again.
“We have told each other very little about ourselves,” the Marquis said. “There has never seemed to be time for it. But I th
