"Madame," he said slowly, "do you never reflect that you may push the part you play too far? That the patience, even of the worst of men, does not endure for ever?"
"I have your word!" she answered.
"And you do not fear?"
"I have your word," she repeated. And now she looked him bravely in the face, her eyes full of the courage of her race.
The lines of his mouth hardened as he met her look. "And what have I of yours?" he said in a low voice. "What have I of yours?"
Her face began to burn at that, her eyes fell and she faltered.
"My grat.i.tude," she murmured, with an upward look that prayed for pity.
"G.o.d knows, Monsieur, you have that!"
"G.o.d knows I do not want it!" he answered. And he laughed derisively.
"Your grat.i.tude!" And he mocked her tone rudely and coa.r.s.ely. "Your grat.i.tude!" Then for a minute--for so long a time that she began to wonder and to quake--he was silent. At last, "A fig for your grat.i.tude,"
he said. "I want your love! I suppose--cold as you are, and a Huguenot--you can love like other women!"
It was the first, the very first time he had used the word to her; and though it fell from his lips like a threat, though he used it as a man presents a pistol, she flushed anew from throat to brow. But she did not quail.
"It is not mine to give," she said.
"It is his?"
"Yes, Monsieur," she answered, wondering at her courage, at her audacity, her madness. "It is his."
"And it cannot be mine--at any time?"
She shook her head, trembling.
"Never?" And, suddenly reaching forward, he gripped her wrist in an iron grasp. There was pa.s.sion in his tone. His eyes burned her.
Whether it was that set her on another track, or pure despair, or the cry in her ears of little children and of helpless women, something in a moment inspired her, flashed in her eyes and altered her voice. She raised her head and looked him firmly in the face.
"What," she said, "do you mean by love?"
"You!" he answered brutally.
"Then--it may be, Monsieur," she returned. "There is a way if you will."
"A way!"
"If you will!"
As she spoke she rose slowly to her feet; for in his surprise he had released her wrist. He rose with her, and they stood confronting one another on the strip of gra.s.s between the river and the poplars.
"If I will?" His form seemed to dilate, his eyes devoured her. "If I will?"
"Yes," she replied. "If you will give me the letters that are in your belt, the packet which I saved to-day--that I may destroy them--I will be yours freely and willingly."
He drew a deep breath, still devouring her with his eyes.
"You mean it?" he said at last.
"I do." She looked him in the face as she spoke, and her cheeks were white, not red. "Only--the letters! Give me the letters."
"And for them you will give me your love?"
Her eyes flickered, and involuntarily she shivered. A faint blush rose and dyed her cheeks.
"Only G.o.d can give love," she said, her tone low.
"And yours is given?"
"Yes."
"To another?"
"I have said it."
"It is his. And yet for these letters--"
"For these lives!" she cried proudly.
"You will give yourself?"
"I swear it," she answered, "if you will give them to me! If you will give them to me," she repeated. And she held out her hands; her face, full of pa.s.sion, was bright with a strange light. A close observer might have thought her distraught; still excited by the struggle in the boat, and barely mistress of herself.
But the man whom she tempted, the man who held her price at his belt, after one searching look at her turned from her; perhaps because he could not trust himself to gaze on her. Count Hannibal walked a dozen paces from her and returned, and again a dozen paces and returned; and again a third time, with something fierce and pa.s.sionate in his gait. At last he stopped before her.
"You have nothing to offer for them," he said, in a cold, hard tone.
"Nothing that is not mine already, nothing that is not my right, nothing that I cannot take at my will. My word?" he continued, seeing her about to interrupt him. "True, Madame, you have it, you had it. But why need I keep my word to you, who tempt me to break my word to the King?"
She made a weak gesture with her hands. Her head had sunk on her breast--she seemed dazed by the shock of his contempt, dazed by his reception of her offer.
"You saved the letters?" he continued, interpreting her action. "True, but the letters are mine, and that which you offer for them is mine also.
You have nothing to offer. For the rest, Madame," he went on, eyeing her cynically, "you surprise me! You, whose modesty and virtue are so great, would corrupt your husband, would sell yourself, would dishonour the love of which you boast so loudly, the love that only G.o.d gives!" He laughed derisively as he quoted her words. "Ay, and, after showing at how low a price you hold yourself, you still look, I doubt not, to me to respect you, and to keep my word. Madame!" in a terrible voice, "do not play with fire! You saved my letters, it is true! And for that, for this time, you shall go free, if G.o.d will help me to let you go! But tempt me not! Tempt me not!" he repeated, turning from her and turning back again with a gesture of despair, as if he mistrusted the strength of the restraint which he put upon himself. "I am no more than other men!
Perhaps I am less. And you--you who prate of love, and know not what love is--could love! could love!"
He stopped on that word as if the word choked him--stopped, struggling with his pa.s.sion. At last, with a half-stifled oath, he flung away from her, halted and hung a moment, then, with a swing of rage, went off again violently. His feet as he strode along the river-bank trampled the flowers, and slew the pale water forget-me-not, which grew among the gra.s.ses.
CHAPTER XXIII. A MIND, AND NOT A MIND.
La Tribe tore through the thicket, imagining Carlat and Count Hannibal hot on his heels. He dared not pause even to listen. The underwood tripped him, the lissom branches of the alders whipped his face and blinded him; once he fell headlong over a moss-grown stone, and picked himself up groaning. But the hare hard-pushed takes no account of the briars, nor does the fox heed the mud through which it draws itself into covert. And for the time he was naught but a hunted beast. With elbows pinned to his sides, or with hands extended to ward off the boughs, with bursting lungs and crimson face, he plunged through the tangle, now slipping downwards, now leaping upwards, now all but prostrate, now breasting a ma.s.s of thorns. On and on he ran, until he came to the verge of the wood, saw before him an open meadow devoid of shelter or hiding- place, and with a groan of despair cast himself flat. He listened. How far were they behind him?