"No, perhaps you are wiser. . . . When are you going to marry him?—Ah forgive my indiscretion! Yet, on the whole, I think I should get his confession out of him first if I were you."
"Confession! Aymar!"
"Yes, even Aymar! . . . Have I not said that he has proved himself human, after all? Listen; the Bonapartists had in their hands at the end of April a woman whom they were, apparently, going to shoot as a spy, because they suspected her of carrying information . . . as she had done, before the Restoration. To save her, Aymar made a bargain, took the fearful risk he did . . . and lost."
"Eulalie, you are dreaming!"
"It is you who are asleep, ma chère. I am trying to wake you, since you will have to come out of the trance some day. . . . Of course you think I am libelling L'Oiseleur. Well, you have only to ask him—though to be sure he may have become so much further human as to lie. . . . I suppose we shall see him before I go?" She looked at the clock. "I have not yet made him my adieux."
"It is . . . a libel!" said Avoye, her breath coming short. "For no woman——"
Mme de Morsan leant forward. "For one woman, perhaps, Avoye . . . for one! Ought you not to be proud? Such a hecatomb . . . and his good name! You see it, do you not, for surely you remember in whose hands you were on the night of April the twenty-seventh?"
"But I . . ." faltered Avoye, staring at her. "I was in no danger . . . there was no talk of shooting . . ."
"Is that so? I can well believe it. But M. de Vaubernier, who brought the news to Aymar here, and acted as his intermediary, was crazed with fear for you."
Avoye had sprung to her feet. "Oh, it's impossible! It's . . . you are lying wickedly! . . . I know that you are lying, for Aymar himself has told me all about the letter, and why he sent it—it was a plan he had already made. And it was not sent to where I was at all! He would have known that I would rather a thousand times . . . but no, it is too absurd to pretend that I was in danger of being shot when I was treated with such courtesy . . . and more than absurd, wicked," she added, as a fresh aspect dawned upon her, "to make out that I—I—was the cause of Pont-aux-Rochers!"