"I am sorry, then, if I must suffer by comparison."
"No, no," she protested. "Oh, why will you twist my words and force me to seem ungrateful? He died rather than have me to wife: you took me on the terms that within a few minutes you must die. For both of you the remedy was at hand, only you chose to save me before taking it. On my knees, sir, I could thank you for that. The crueller were they that, when you stood up claiming your right to die, they broke the bargain and cheated you."
"Princess," I said, after musing a moment, "if my surviving seemed to you so pitiable, there was another way." I pointed to her musket.
"Yes, cavalier, and I will confess to you that when, having fired wide, they turned to go and the cheat was evident, twice before you pulled the bandage away I had lifted my gun. But I could not fire it, cavalier. To make me your executioner! Me, your wife—and while you thought so vilely of me!"
"Faith," said I grimly, "it was asking too much, even for a Genoese! Yet again I think you overrate their little trick, since, after all"—I touched my own gunstock—"there remains a third way—the way chosen by young Odo of Rocca Serra."
She put out a hand. "Sir, that way you need not take—if you will be patient and hear me!"
"Lady," said I, "you may hastily despise me; but I am neither going to take that way, nor to be patient, nor to hear you. But I am, as you invited me, going to be very frank and confess to you, risking your contempt, that I am extremely thankful the Genoese did not shoot me, a while ago. Indeed, I do not remember in all my life to have felt so glad, as I feel just now, to be alive. Give me your gun, if you please."
"I do not understand."
"No, you do not understand. . . . Your gun, please . . . nay, you can lay it on the turf between us. The phial, too, that you offered your brother. . . . Thank you. And now, my wife, let us talk of your country and mine; two islands which appear to differ more than I had guessed. In Corsica it would seem that, let a vile thing be spoken against a woman, it suffices. Belief in it does not count: it suffices that a shadow has touched her, and rather than share that shadow, men will kill themselves—so tender a plant is their honour. Now, in England, O Princess, men are perhaps even more irrational. They, no more than your Corsicans, listen to the evidence and ask themselves, 'Is this good evidence or bad? Do I believe it or disbelieve?' They begin father back, Princess—Shall I tell you how? They look in the face of their beloved, and they say, 'Slander this, not as you wish for belief, but only as you dare; for here my faith is fixed beforehand.'
"And therefore, O Princess," I went on, after a pause in which we eyed one another slowly, "therefore, I disbelieve any slander concerning you; not merely because your brother's confessor was its author—though that, to any rational man, should be enough—but because I have looked in your face. Therefore also I, your husband, forbid you to speak what would dishonour us both."