“I would give two days to no man,” Marguerite replied, gently, “though I would give my whole life to one man.”
“Even though he deserted?” Gerard asked, with a sneer.
“Paul had not deserted when I gave myself to him,” she answered, quietly. “When he did, it was to save me!”
Gerard did not want to hear anything about that. Some conjecture that the truth of this catastrophe was to be discovered there, had been at the back of his mind ever since he had recognised Marguerite. But he intended not to listen to it, not to let it speak at all. Somehow, her use of Paul’s name angered him extremely. It dropped from her lips with so usual and homely a sound.
“No doubt it was to save you. It would be!” he said, sardonically. “Some decent excuse would be needed even between you two when you sat together alone through the long dark evenings.”
Gerard meant to hurt, but Marguerite wore an armour against him and his arrows were much too blunt to pierce it. She had a purpose of her own to serve, of which Gerard de Montignac knew nothing; she was clutching at a desperate chance—if, indeed, so frail a thing could be called a chance—not of merely saving her lover’s life, but of so much more that she hardly dared to think upon it. Her only weapon now and for a long heart-breaking time to come, was patience.
“You are unjust,” she said, without any anger, and without any appeal that he should reconsider his words. Gerard suddenly remembered the last words that the black-bearded Basha had spoken as he climbed onto his mule.
“We are all in God’s hand.”
Marguerite had spoken just in his tone. Argument and prayer were of no value now. It was all written, all fated. What would be, would be. Either Gerard de Montignac would drop that revolver from his hand and her desperate chance become a little less frail than before, or he would not.
“What was it that woman in the spangled skirt used to say of you?” Gerard asked, with a seeming irrelevance.