"You still fear me, then?" he said, in a voice hoarse and unnatural. "Is
it for what I do or for what I leave undone that you hate me, Madame?
Tell me, I beg, for--"
"For neither!" she said, trembling. His eyes, hot and passionate, were
on her, and the blood had mounted to his brow. "For neither! I do not
hate you, Monsieur!"
"You fear me then? I am right in that."
"I fear--that which you carry with you," she stammered, speaking on
impulse and scarcely knowing what she said.
He started, and his expression changed. "So?" he exclaimed. "So? You
know what I carry, do you? And from whom? From whom," he continued in a
tone of menace, "if you please, did you get that knowledge?"
"From M. La Tribe," she muttered. She had not meant to tell him. Why
had she told him?
He nodded. "I might have known it," he said. "I more than suspected it.
Therefore I should be the more beholden to you for saving the letters.
But"--he paused and laughed harshly--"it was out of no love for me you
saved them. That too I know."
She did not answer or protest; and when he had waited a moment in vain
expectation of her protest, a cruel look crept into his eyes.
"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 gratitude," she murmured, with an upward look that prayed for pity.
"God knows, Monsieur, you have that!"
"God knows I do not want it!" he answered. And he laughed derisively.
"Your gratitude!" And he mocked her tone rudely and coarsely. "Your
gratitude!" 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 gratitude,"
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.