She stayed him, with a soft hand put upon his mouth.
“Do not say it,” she said quite quietly. “It is enough that you reject my offer. That you may repent when you find your fiercer manhood—when you realise what you have lost. Well, you have been good to me; though, if I have suffered here in the wood while I waited for you, it was not because my heart was other than a stone.”
“Then, for shame!” cried Ned, “so to sell yourself!”
“Ah!” said Théroigne, in the same quiet voice; “but I have made my bed according to monsieur’s proverb, and it is a double one—that is all. And is it not gallant when a woman falls to help her to her feet?”
“It is not gallant to help her, the victim of one lie, to enact another.”
“Surely; and monsieur is the soul of truth.”
She adjusted her cloak and hat, stooped and took up her bundle.
“I am distasteful to monsieur,” she said. “Very well.”
For some reason Ned was moved to immediate anger.
“Your hat is, anyhow,” he snapped. “I think it quite preposterously ugly.”