"Because I expected you sooner."
"I still arrive too soon for you, assassin!" added Maurice, with a murmured growl rather than a voice, since it resembled the grumbling of a storm gathered in his heart, his looks being like the lightning's flashes.
"You fling fire from your eyes, Citizen," replied Dixmer. "We shall be recognized, and followed."
"Yes; and you fear to be arrested, do you not? You dread lest you might be conducted to the scaffold where you send others. Let them arrest us, so much the better; for it seems to me that the life of one guilty wretch was due to national justice."
"As there is one name the less on the list of people of honor. Is it not so—since yours has disappeared?"
"Well, we shall speak about all that again, I hope; but, in the mean time, you are avenged—miserably avenged—upon a woman. Why, since you have waited for me elsewhere, did you not do so at my house, when you stole away Geneviève?"
"You were the first thief, I believe."
"Neither by your wit nor your words have I ever known you, sir. I know you better by your actions,—witness the day when you wanted to murder me. That day your true nature spoke."
"And I have more than once regretted that I did not listen to it," answered Dixmer, coolly.