for it, has no desire to--"
"See me, or speak to me!" I said, taking him up. "I can understand that. Yet I want to speak to her."
"Very well, you can speak to her before me," he answered rudely. "Let us ride on and join her." And he made a movement as if to do so.
"That will not do, M. de Cocheforêt," I said firmly, stopping him with my hand. "Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I ask; but I swear to you, if Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will repent it all her life."
He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker. "Fine words!" he said presently, with a sneer. "Yet I fancy I understand them." Then with a passionate oath he broke out in a fresh tone. "But I will not have it. I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I understand. But I will not have it! I will have no such Judas bargain made. Pardieu! do you think I could suffer it and show my face again?"
"I don't know what you mean!" I said, restraining myself with difficulty. I could have struck the fool.
"But I know what you mean," he replied, in a tone of repressed rage. "You would have her sell herself: sell herself body and soul to you to save me! And you would have me stand by and see the thing done! Well, my answer is--never! though I go to the wheel! I will die a gentleman, if I have lived a fool!"
"I think you will do the one as certainly as you have done the other," I retorted, in my exasperation. And yet I admired him.
"Oh, I am not such a fool," he cried, scowling at me, "as you have perhaps thought. I have used my eyes."
"Then be good enough now to favour me with your ears," I answered drily. "And listen when I say that no such bargain has ever crossed my mind. You were kind enough to think well of me last night, M. de Cocheforêt. Why should the mention of Mademoiselle in a moment change your opinion? I wish simply to speak to her. I have nothing to ask from her; neither favour nor anything else. And what I say she will doubtless tell you afterwards. Ciel, man!" I continued angrily, "what harm can I do to her, in the road, in your sight?"
He looked at me sullenly, his face still flushed, his eyes suspicious. "What do you want to say to her?" he asked jealously. He was quite unlike himself. His airy nonchalance, his careless gaiety, were gone.
"You know what I do not want to say to her, M. de Cocheforêt," I answered. "That should be enough."
He glowered at me for a moment, still ill content. Then, without a word, he made me a gesture to go to her.
She had halted a score of paces away, wondering doubtless what was on foot. I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I lost the expression of her face as I approached, but the manner in which she turned her horse's head uncompromisingly towards her brother, and looked past me--as if I were merely a log in the road--was full of meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under me. I saluted her, trembling. "Mademoiselle," I said, "will you grant me the privilege of your company for a few minutes, as we ride."
"To what purpose, Sir?" she answered, in the coldest voice in which I think a woman ever spoke to a man.
"That I may explain to you a great many things you do not understand," I murmured.
"I prefer to be in the dark," she replied. And her manner said more than her words.
"But, Mademoiselle," I pleaded,--I would not be discouraged,--"you told me one day that you would never judge me hastily again."
"Facts judge you, not I, Sir," she answered icily. "I am not sufficiently on a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank God."
I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we stood was warm. "Still--once before you thought the same!" I exclaimed. "Afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may be so again, Mademoiselle."
"Impossible," she said.
That stung me. "No!" I said fiercely. "It is not impossible. It is you who are impossible! It is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have done much, very much, in the last three days to make things lighter for you. I ask you now to do something for me which can cost you nothing."
"Nothing?" she answered slowly; and her scornful voice cut me as if it had been a knife. "Do you think, Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose my self-respect, as I do with every word I speak to you? Do you think it costs me nothing to be here, where I feel every look you cast on me an insult, every breath I take in your presence a contamination. Nothing, Monsieur?" She laughed in bitter irony. "Oh, be sure, something! But something which I despair of making clear to you."
I sat for a moment in my saddle, shaken and quivering with pain. It had been one thing to feel that she hated and scorned me, to know that the trust and confidence which she had begun to place in me were changed to loathing. It was another to listen to her hard, pitiless words, to change colour under the lash of her gibing tongue. For a moment I could not find voice to answer her. Then I pointed to M. de Cocheforêt. "Do you love him?" I said, hoarsely, roughly. The gibing tone had passed from her voice to mine.
She did not answer.
"Because, if you do," I continued, "you will let me tell my tale. Say no but once more, Mademoiselle,--I am only human,--and I go. And you will repent it all your life."
I had done better had I taken that tone from the beginning. She winced, her head drooped, she seemed to grow smaller. All in a moment, as it were, her pride collapsed. "I will hear you," she answered feebly.
"Then we will ride on, if you please," I said, keeping the advantage I had gained. "You need not fear. Your brother will follow."
I caught hold of her rein and turned her horse, and she suffered it without demur. In a moment we were pacing side by side, the long, straight road before us. At the end where it topped the hill, I could see the finger-post,--two faint black lines against the sky. When we reached that, involuntarily I checked my horse and made it move more slowly.
"Well, Sir," she said impatiently. And her figure shook as if with cold.
"It is a tale I desire to tell you, Mademoiselle," I answered, speaking with effort. "Perhaps I may seem to begin a long way off, but before I end, I promise to interest you. Two months ago there was living in Paris a man, perhaps a bad man, at any rate, by common report, a hard man."
She turned to me suddenly, her eyes gleaming through her mask. "Oh, Monsieur, spare me this!" she said, quietly scornful. "I will take it for granted."
"Very well," I replied steadfastly. "Good or bad, this man, one day, in defiance of the Cardinal's edict against duelling, fought with a young Englishman behind St. Jacques Church. The Englishman had influence, the person of whom I speak had none, and an indifferent name; he was arrested, thrown into the Châtelet, cast for death, left for days to face death. At the last an offer was made to him. If he would seek out and deliver up another man, an outlaw with a price upon his head, he should himself go free."
I paused and drew a deep breath. Then I continued, looking not at her, but into the distance: "Mademoiselle, it seems easy now to say what course he should have chosen. It seems hard now to find excuses for him. But there was one thing which I plead for him. The task he was asked to undertake was a dangerous one. He risked, he knew he must risk, and the event proved him right, his life against the life of this unknown man. And--one thing more--there was time before him. The outlaw might be taken by another, might be killed, might die, might--. But there, Mademoiselle, we know what answer
