“It is easy, though our natures may be the remotest from theirs. Verjuice loves oil in this queer salad of life. But where I have come to love through saving, I would save again and yet again.”
“You speak a good deal of yourself, monsieur. Forgive me if I cannot quite share your interest in the subject. No doubt your friend appreciated your assistance in saving him a second time from destruction. It is fataller, I am sure, in such eyes as yours, to fall in love than into an abyss.”
“You misunderstand me—I hope not wilfully. I did not mean to speak of saving my friend from you, but for you. I do not mean it now. I am here to offer you my services.”
She drew herself up magnificently.
“I thank you, monsieur. I was to be excused perhaps, for wishing to read on the better side of an insolence. You had done well, according to your lights, I am sure, to strive to keep us apart—well to your worthy patron; well for your worthy self. I could have respected you at least for that consistency. But to offer to mend what you have helped to mar! I am at a loss to understand how I have invited this insult.”
A dark flush rose on Trix’s cheek. What was this new-born perversity in him which made him not only bare his heart to this sting of words, but, like a very anchorite of love, take pleasure in his chastising? Her frost fired him.
“You are bitter, mademoiselle,” he said. “I could answer, very truly, in self-defence that I was so far from choosing to have a hand in this business, as it has sped, that I foresaw from the first what has actually happened—that your exaltation would spell my ruin. I would answer that, I say, but that I own to no man’s power to ruin me.”
She was quite unmoved.
“Those who serve evil must bide evil,” she said. “If, as you would seem to imply, monsieur, your employer has made you the scapegoat of his reformation, I can only regret, very sincerely, my involuntary part in your dismissal. Believe me, I would give all my exaltation to reinstate you.”
“I used the term unthinkingly,” said Cartouche. “It was the formal phrase of a worldling. Will you persist in thinking me too bad to be moved by the distresses of virtue hard beset?”