“That wretch!” I whispered—“this morning?”
“It was what I said, monsieur,—the loup-garou of the Salle de la Liberté. But where one attaches any responsibility to life, one should learn to distinguish between bravado and courage.”
I think I must have turned very pale, for a sudden concern came into her face.
“Mademoiselle,” I said, “will persist in giving me the best reason for holding life cheaply—that I cannot, it seems, find favour with her.”
“Was it, then, monsieur, that you yourself were your only consideration?”
“Oh! give me at least the indulgence,” I cried, “to retort upon an insolent that insults me.”
“Grand Dieu!” she said, mockingly; “but what a perverted heroism! And must a man’s duty be always first towards his dignity, and afterwards, a long way——”
She broke off, panting, and tapping her foot on the ground. I looked at her, all mazed and dumfoundered.
“And afterwards?” I repeated. She would not continue. A little silence succeeded.
“Mademoiselle,” I said at length sadly—“let me speak out what is in my heart, and have done with it. That little cry of pity and of protest that I heard uttered this morning when sentence was demanded upon me in the Palais de Justice, and that I must needs now associate with this new dear knowledge of your freedom—if I have put upon it an unwarrantable construction, something beyond the mere expression of a woman’s sympathy with the unfortunate—you will, I am sure, extend that sympathy to my blindness, the realisation of which must in itself prove my heavy punishment. If, also, I have dared to translate the anxiety you have by your own showing suffered, here in this savage burrow, into a sentiment more profound than that of simple concern for an old-time comrade, you will spare my presumption, will you not, the bitterness of a rebuke? It shall not be needed, believe me. My very love——”