“What other?” he murmured again, but with a dreadful intuition of the truth.
“Nay,” she said, “love hath not done with thee. Only thou must run with the hare instead of hunting with the dogs.”
“What other?” he repeated dully.
“A saint, monsieur; yet one that, for all her chastity, hath caught the infection of these liberal times.”
She gazed into his face piercingly.
“I swear I never guessed,” she murmured. “I swear I hold her the dearer and the purer that she is revealed human in the end. The handmaid of God! Ah! but so to testify to His choice by this long discipline of her heart! And now, directing her in this pursuit of thee, He ratifies the new licence; and she shall not be less the saint because her passion is sanctified of a human love.”
“It is a vile blasphemy,” said the man. “You speak of Nicette Legrand.”
She clapped her hands.
“But, yes,” she cried in shrill triumph; “I speak of Nicette Legrand, whose heart, it seems, thou stolest—one of the common things that thou, and such as thou, would use to the profit of an idle hour, whilst thy honour was pledged elsewhere. But who enlists Love in his service shall engage a parasite to devour him.”
“Nicette!” he only murmured once more.