"I am in your debt a thousand crowns," said she, and, stopping her horse, she wrote for him an order for a thousand crowns, and she signed it with her own name, Osra, and gave it to him. He received it bowing very low.
"You knew me all the time?" she asked.
"Yes, madame," said he. They had now come to where he had first met her.
"Why do you live by robbery?" she asked.
"For the love of the same thing that made you come with me to-day, madame."
"But could you not find what you love in the King's service?"
"I do not like service, madame," said Christian. "I love to be free."
She paused for a moment, and then said in a lower tone:
"Could you not endure my service, sir?"
"In that I shall now live and die, madame," said he, and she felt his eyes upon her.