'I will not pollute you with my touch,' he said coolly, seeing that at sight of him she had retreated a step or two, as she would have done had she encountered a noisome reptile. He remained standing in the doorway, leaning against the woodwork, with arms folded and legs crossed and an insolent leer in his dark eyes.
'Then I pray you to let me pass,' was her calm rejoinder.
'Not,' he riposted, 'till you have allowed me to say something to you, which hath weighed on my heart these past three weeks.'
'There is nothing that you can wish to say to me, M. le Marquis, that I would care to hear.'
'You are severe, Jacqueline,' he said. Then, as she made no reply save an indifferent shrug of the shoulders, he added with well-feigned humility: 'Not more so than I deserve, I know. But I was delirious on that day. I did not know what I was saying. Jealousy had completely obscured my brain. You would not make a madman responsible for his ravings!'
'Let us leave it at that, M. le Marquis,' she rejoined calmly. 'But you will understand that I do not care to listen to that same madman's ravings again.'
'How cold you are!' he murmured, sighed dolefully like one in utter grief. His whole attitude suddenly betokened contrition and overwhelming sentiment; his fine dark eyes even contrived to fill themselves with tears. 'Have you forgotten so soon, Jacqueline?' he asked, 'all that you and I have meant to one another in the past; how oft your golden head hath rested against my heart!'
But she was not like to be taken in by this mood, the falseness of which was transparent enough.
'An' you do not cease to insult me with your ramblings,' she said, with all the scorn which his contemptible ruse deserved, 'I will call to my servants to rid me of your presence.'
'Your servants are too far away to hear you,' he retorted with a cynical laugh. 'And if you do not listen to me to-day, Jacqueline, you will put it out of my power to save you from humiliation and your lover from death.'