"Do you hate me, Fernande?" he insisted.
She would have given worlds for the power to jump up then and there and to run away. But some invisible bond kept her chained to the spot. She could not move. There was a clump of meadowsweet close to her feet, all interwoven with marguerites, and overhead a mountain-ash was in full bloom and the pungent scent went to her head like wine. Her cheeks felt glowing with heat, and there were tiny beads of perspiration at the roots of her hair, but her hands felt cold and her feet numb, and her throat was dry and parched.
She had just enough strength left to try and hide her confusion from him. She stooped and picked a marguerite, and thoughtfully, mechanically, her delicate fingers began to pull the white petals off one by one.
"An that flower does not lie," he said, with the same quiet earnestness, "it will tell you that I love you ... passionately...."
The word, the look which accompanied it—above all, his hand which had without any warning seized her own—suddenly dispelled the witchery which up to now had so unaccountably held her will and her spirit in bondage. With a brusque movement she jumped to her feet and wrenched her hand out of his grasp, and now stood before him, tall, stately, with flaming cheeks and wrath-filled eyes, whilst a laugh of infinite scorn broke from her lips.
"Ah çà!" she exclaimed, "you have methinks taken leave of your senses, Monsieur mon cousin. Or hath rumour lied again, when it averred that you led an abstemious life? The cellars of La Vieuville are well stocked with wine apparently, and its fumes have overclouded your brain, or you had not dared to insult me with such folly."
He, too, had risen and stood facing her, his cheeks pale beneath their bronze, his hands tightly clenched.
"There is no insult," he said quietly, as soon as she had finished speaking, "in the offer of an honest man's love."
"An honest man's love?" she retorted. "The love of a man whose hands are stained with the blood of all those I care for!"
"A truce on this childishness, Fernande," he rejoined almost roughly. "Are we puppets, you and I, to dance to the piping of political wirepullers? I say, that when a man and a woman love one another, political aims and ideals soon sink into insignificance. What matters it if you desire to see this nation governed by a descendant of the Bourbons, or I by a newly-risen military genius? What matters it, dear heart, if one loves?..."