“Baptiste.”
He drew himself up with an astonished expression. What answer was to make here—what course pursue with a soul so inadequate? She spoke of her parents, it seemed; was pleading their favouritism in vindication of her crime. It was a confession of moral obliquity so ingenuous as to baffle argument. For the first time a shock of conscious pity for a thing so handicapped in the pursuit of the living principle shook him. He bent down, seized the box of sweetmeat, and flung it into the fire. The girl gave a strange little cry, and gazed up at him, her mouth breathless, her eyes glazed with the floating of sudden tears.
“What now?” said Ned.
Her voice broke in a quick sob.
“I thought there was no hope or forgiveness, that you meant to hate me for evermore.”
He turned away. How could he be other than moved and stricken? She had not, after all, so much sought to extenuate her crime as to plead for herself against the hatred she had thought his act was meant to express.
There was silence for a time; then he sat down in a chair apart from her, and spoke, gazing into the fire.
“How can you think it mine either to hate or to forgive? How—” (he struck his hand to his forehead—turned upon her in utter desperation). “Nicette! do you ever feel remorse for your deed?”
“I dare not think of it,” she whispered. Then suddenly she cried out, “I think the people of my dreams are often more real than the living about me. They come and go, sweet or terrible. Was it one of them left Baptiste to die in the tree! Oh, monsieur, monsieur! if I could learn it—that I was not guilty of his death! Or if I could die myself and atone!”
She buried her face in her hands.