"As you please," she said curtly.
"What were these papers?" he repeated, with a loud obscene oath which, however, had not the power to disturb the young girl's serenity.
"I have told you," she said: "love letters, which I wished to burn."
"Who was your lover?" he asked.
Then as she did not reply he indicated the street, where cries of "Déroulède! Vive Déroulède!" still echoed from afar.
"Were the letters from him?"
"No."
"You had more than one lover, then?"
He laughed, and a hideous leer seemed further to distort his ugly countenance.
He thrust his face quite close to hers, and she closed her eyes, sick with the horror of this contact with the degraded wretch. Even Anne Mie had uttered a cry of sympathy at sight of this evil-smelling, squalid creature torturing, with his close proximity, the beautiful, refined girl before him.