And again they pay the price: and so on to the last foreclosure and the immitigable end.
One of the two standing in the door of the ruined chapel on the Ecrehos had the nature of those who buy but once and pay the price but once; the other was of those who keep open accounts in the markets of life. The one was the woman and the other was the man.
There was nothing conventional in their greeting. “You remembered me!” he said eagerly, in English, thinking of yesterday.
“I shouldn’t deserve to be here if I had forgotten,” she answered meaningly. “Perhaps you forget the sword of the Turk?” she added.
He laughed a little, his cheek flushed with pleasure. “I shouldn’t deserve to be here if I remembered—in the way you mean,” he answered.
Her face was full of pleasure. “The worst of it is,” she said, “I never can pay my debt. I have owed it for eleven years, and if I should live to be ninety I should still owe it.”
His heart was beating hard and he became daring. “So, thou shalt save my life,” he said, speaking in French. “We shall be quits then, thou and I.”
The familiar French thou startled her. To hide the instant’s confusion she turned her head away, using a hand to gather in her hair, which the wind was lifting lightly.
“That wouldn’t quite make us quits,” she rejoined; “your life is important, mine isn’t. You”—she nodded towards the Narcissus—“you command men.”
“So dost thou,” he answered, persisting in the endearing pronoun.