"I mean that you persuaded me to listen to you on the pretence that you had news to tell me of the doings at Waterloo—news on which my happiness depended. You have not told me a single fact that concerns me in the least."
"It concerns you as it concerns me, Crystal. Your happiness is bound up with mine. You are still my promised wife. I go to win glory for my name which will soon be yours. You and I, Crystal, hand in hand! think of it! our love has survived the political turmoils—united in love, united in glory, you and I will be the most brilliant stars that will shine at the Imperial Court of France."
She did not try to interrupt his tirade, but looked on him with cool wonderment, as one gazes on some curious animal that is raving and raging behind iron bars. When he had finished she said quietly:
"You are mad, I think, M. de Marmont. At any rate, you had better go now: time is getting on, and you will lose your place in the diligence."
He was less to her than the dust under her feet, and his protestations had not even the power to rouse her wrath. Indeed, all that worried her at this moment was vexation with herself for having troubled to listen to him at all: it had been worse than foolish to suppose that he had any news to impart which did not directly concern himself. So now, while he, utterly taken aback, was staring at her open-mouthed and bewildered, she turned away, cold and full of disdain, gathering her draperies round her, and started to walk slowly toward the stairs. Her clinging white skirt made a soft, swishing sound as it brushed the tiled floor, and she herself—with her slender figure, graceful neck and crown of golden curls, looked, as the gloom of evening wrapped her in, more like an intangible elf—an apparition—gliding through space, than just a scornful woman who had thought fit to reject the importunate addresses of an unwelcome suitor.
She left de Marmont standing there in the corridor—like some presumptuous beggar—burning with rage and humiliation, too insignificant even to be feared. But he was not the man to accept such a situation calmly: his love for Crystal had never been anything but a selfish one—born of the desire to possess a high-born, elegant wife, taken out of the very caste which had scorned him and his kind: her acquiescence he had always taken for granted: her love he meant to win after his wooing of her hand had been successful—until then he could wait. So certain too was he of his own power to win her, in virtue of all that he had to offer, that he would not take her scorn for real or her refusal to listen to him as final.
IV
Before she had reached the foot of the stairs, he was already by her side, and with a masterful hand upon her arm had compelled her, by physical strength, to turn and to face him once more.
"Crystal," he said, forcing himself to speak quietly, even though his voice quivered with excitement and passionate wrath, "as you say, I have only a few moments to spare, but they are just long enough for me to tell you that it is you who are mad. I daresay that it is difficult to believe in the immensity of a disaster. M. de St. Genis no doubt has been filling your ears with tales of the allied armies' victories. But look at me, Crystal—look at me and tell me if you have ever seen a man more in deadly earnest. I tell you that I am on my way to aid the Emperor in reforming his Empire on a more solid basis than it has ever stood before. Have you ever known Napoleon to fail in what he set himself to do? I tell you that he is not crushed—that he is not even defeated. Within a month the allies will be on their knees begging for peace. The era of your Bourbon kings is more absolutely dead to-day than it has ever been. And after to-day there will be nothing for a royalist like your father or like Maurice de St. Genis but exile and humiliation more dire than before. Your father's fate rests entirely in your hands. I can direct his destiny, his life or his death, just as I please. When you are my wife, I will forgive him the insults which he heaped on me at Brestalou . . . but not before. . . . As for Maurice de St. Genis . . ."