“Take thy fill of her name,” said the girl scornfully. “I tell thee, Love presumes upon his hire. Didst thou think he had discarded thee? He shall prove a tyrant whom thou thought’st to make thy servant.”
He fell, suddenly, quite calm and cold.
“Well,” he said, “so Nicette is in Paris?”
She answered—
“In Paris—a month’s long journey, by rock and briar, for those poor, patient feet. Oh,” she cried, “that I should ever have unwittingly wronged her by seeking to convert this block—this stone—to my own passionate uses!”
“And so she hath explained it to you?” he said, in the same even tone. “Well, she is a liar, from first to last; and at least it is fitting that a murderess should give sanctuary to a murderess.”
She stared at him, breathing softly.
“Am I to kill you?” she said.
He laughed without merriment.
“Listen to me, Théroigne. I never desired this woman, or gave her one pretext for asserting that I did. If she says otherwise, she lies. If she tells you that she left Méricourt to follow me, she lies. She has fled because she has been discovered in a deception as vile, a crime as inhuman, as any that have blackened the world since the race began.”