Then he rose to his feet and stood a little away from her.
"They were in this house," he repeated. His lips and throat were arid; he had the sensation that his voice came from afar off. "What—what happened to Mireille? Did they hurt her?"
"No. She was afraid ... she screamed ... and they tied her to that railing. There"—she pointed with her trembling hand to the wrought-iron banister.
And again Florian's silence fell upon her heart like a rock and lay there, heavily, crushing the life out of her.
After a long while he moved. He stepped back still further from her, and his lips stirred once or twice before the words came.
"And you? Did they—harm you?"
Silence.
He waited a long time, then he repeated the question; and again he felt as if his voice came from miles away.
Chérie suddenly dropped her face in her hands. He was answered. He sprang forward and seized her wrists, dragging them away from her face. "It is not true," he cried; "swear that it is not true!" And even as he spoke he felt and hated the soft limp wrists, the feminine weakness, all the delicate yielding frailty of her. He would have liked to feel her of steel and adamant, that he might break and shatter her, that he might crush and destroy.
Now she was at his feet, sobbing and crying; and he had clenched his fists so tightly in order not to strike her that his nails dug deep into his palms. He looked down at her shimmering hair, at the white nape of her neck, at her fragile, heaving shoulders. The enemy had had her. The enemy had had her and held her. She whom he had deemed too sacred for his touch, she whom he had never dared to kiss on cheek or hair or lips had quenched the brutish desire of the invader!... The foul, blood-drunken soldiers had had their will of her—and there she lay sullied, ruined, and defiled.