“And how would you propose to help that poor virtue, sir? For what are your services offered? I will not even sully myself by understanding—unless to suppose that you design to make me an instrument of your revenge on one who has wronged you.”
The flush on his face deepened.
“You are an angel, madame,” he said grimly. “You claim your full prerogatives. I can never please you better, I see, than by avowing my knowledge of the gulf which separates us. I, too, will be myself, flagrantly and without compromise. My affections are all earthly. Very well, I love the man I have saved, because I saved him. I see him stricken down—helpless—his very reason threatened under a calamity worse than death.”
Her face had gone bloodless; she answered, faltering,—
“As to that, monsieur, assure yourself, assure him if you please, that nothing but a convention separates us now, nor ever will.”
He looked wonderingly at her. Did she mean to kill herself? He could quite believe it, as the more pardonable of two self-offences Then he breathed and laughed.
“A convention!” he cried. “I am nearer you by that admission. There is no moral bondage in conventions. Let me bring my friend to you and save him.”
She reared herself like a very snake.
“I would you had never saved him,” she said deeply; “I would you had never laid that claim on his regard. My only regret in dismissing you is that I re-condemn him to this corruption. Go, sir, and insult and trouble me no longer!”
He had lost, and turned to leave her. But for a moment he paused, in anger and confusion, to fire his final charge,—