Herr Freudenberg smiled. With a wave of his hand they were alone.
"Dear Marguerite," he said quietly, "compose yourself. All those who stand in my way and the way of my country must be swept aside, but remember this. They have all received their warning. I lift my hand against no one who has not first received a chance of escape."
"He was a man so gallant," she faltered, "so comme il faut.
Listen to me, please."
She laid the newspaper upon the table and kept the flat of her hand still upon it. Then she leaned towards him.
"You will not be angry with me?" she implored. "Indeed I did it to please you, to win, if I could, a little more of your love. I knew that this man Sir Julien stood in your path and that you found it difficult to remove him. An impulse came to me. We had talked together gayly as a man of gallantry may talk to a woman like myself. It might easily pass for flirting, those things that he has said. Although you, dear one," she added, looking across the table, "know how it is with me when such words are spoken. Well, I bought cartridges for my little pistol that you gave me, I thrust it into the bosom of my gown, I wore my prettiest clothes, and yesterday I went to his rooms."
Herr Freudenberg's cold eyes were suddenly fixed upon her face. His fingers stopped their drumming upon the tablecloth.
"Proceed!"
"I meant to shoot him," she confessed. "I thought that if I could not escape afterwards it was so easy for people to believe that he was my lover, that it was a crime of jealousy, a moment's passion. I said to myself, too, that you would help so that after all my punishment would be a very small affair. In no other way it seemed to me could he have been disposed of so easily."
"Sweet little fool!" Herr Freudenberg murmured. "Did it never enter into your little brain that you are known as my companion?"
She shook her head.