"It is your own folly that has caused you to be suspected," he responded.
"It is the devices that men call dishonesty and statesmen diplomacy," she answered; and he put his arm around her waist and drew her back until she was seated upon the edge of his chair.
"Pretty little girls must not use cynical epigrams," he said, softly, as one petting a spoiled child. "Now, come, what is it you want?"
"I want nothing," she burst out, indignantly, "but I demand justice. I demand to be freed from this insinuation of theft. I do not ask, I demand, that Monsieur Levivé, who is innocent, shall be relieved from suspicion, and you shall confess how you have stolen this paper."
"Purloined, ma petite," he exclaimed, as he playfully pinched her ear.
"Stolen," she doggedly repeated. "Stolen, not caring whom you ruined, man or woman."
"Tut, tut; what an undiplomatic little girl she is," he laughed, with a wonderful depth of fondness in his tone; and then he rose, and, after pacing the room for a minute, turned to me.
"Madame Lerestelle," he exclaimed, "I am known in political life as the most unscrupulous man in France; that is the reputation I have won, and the one I live to retain. As a man, I admire Monsieur Roché; as a politician, I despise him. I consider that his theories are imbecilic, his policy meaningless, and his ministry an insult to the country—"
"Monsieur, I differ—"
"Madame, I respect you the more. You are a friend of Monsieur Roché's, but, because I think what I do think, I will annihilate him. Because I work for the glory of France, and not for my own ends, I have stooped to pledge my written word only to steal it back."