“Is it the music,” cried the girl, “that I have bartered my honour to listen to? There are greater voices in the air—the thunder of cannon; the roar of an emancipated people!”
“Certainly it is true, by report,” said Ned, “that the French Bastille is fallen into the hands of the mob—a consummation remotely influenced, no doubt, by the Club of Nature’s Gentry.”
“Into the hands of Liberty, monsieur. The reign of falsehood is dead. The ideal triumphs, however far its wicked apostles may have sought to misconstrue it! And I am of the people! I am of the people—the people!”
She gazed up—as if in a sudden inspired ecstasy—then buried her face in her hands. Her full bosom heaved. She was beyond all control overwrought.
“Théroigne!” exclaimed Ned, moved out of, and despite himself.
She looked up again, with flashing wet eyes.
“My love is sworn to Liberty!” she cried; “my hate to those who would make of her a pander to their own base desires. So much of his teaching remains; and let him abide by its consequences. It is for me to drive the moral home, to reveal him for the thing he is—the thing he is!”
Then Ned, holding no brief for St Denys, was tempted to an inexcusable utterance—
“He was the father of your child, Théroigne.”
The girl started as if she had been struck. She raised her eyes and clasped her hands; and she said, in a quivering voice—