"You shall not go," she reiterated half deliriously.
He could not have wrenched himself free from her grasp without hurting her delicate hands. "Dear heart," he said more gently, "I'll return in a trice."
"You shall not go."
"Fernande!"
"You shall not go."
Then suddenly he yielded. With a quick movement he turned and caught her in his arms.
"Ah, Fernande!" he said exultantly, "can you tell me now that you do not love me?" And as she, suddenly brought back to her senses, tried to drag herself away from him, he seized both her wrists and held her there one moment firmly, almost brutally, so that she was forced to look him straight in the eyes—his deep-set, passionate eyes, wherein love, triumph, joy, a mad jubilation had kindled a glowing light.
"It was all a ruse, Fernande," he said, and the words came with vast rapidity, tumbling through his lips, "a ruse to catch you unawares. Do you think that I care if an assassin doth lurk behind a thicket? Our fate is in God's hands, and I have affronted Prussian or Austrian cannon too often to think twice of a peasant's musket. But I wanted you to know, to realize what love means. And just now, when you thought my life in danger, there came a call from your heart, Fernande, the hearing of which I would not barter for the highest place in paradise."
"It is false," she cried. "Let me go!"
"You love me, Fernande."