"Alas! alas! it cannot be," Laure murmured. "It is impossible."
"At first," Marion went on, "he may, it is true, deem that you used him only as a tool. He may do so because no man who ever lived has yet understood woman's nature--ever sounded the depths of that nature. Therefore, not knowing, as they none of them know, our hearts, he may at first believe, as you say, that you sacrificed his existence to your salvation. Not understanding, not guessing in his man's blindness that, as he made the sacrifice, so the love for him sprang newborn into your heart. Is it not so, Laure? Here in the midst of all these horrors with which we are surrounded, here with death close at hand, with infection in the air, ready to seize on one or all at any moment, answer me. Speak truth as you would speak it on your death-bed. You love him--loved him from that moment? Answer! Is it not so?"
"Yes," Laure said, faintly, her whisper being almost drowned in the soft, cool breeze that came sweeping over them from the distant mountain-tops of the Basses Alpes. "Yes, I loved him from the first--from the moment when he took me to his house. Oh, God!" she murmured, "when he told me that we must part, deeming that I could never love him, almost I threw myself at his feet, almost I rushed to his arms beseeching him to fold me in them, to stay by my side for ever. And now--now--we shall never meet again."
"Never meet again, perhaps," said Marion, scorning to hold out hopes to the other that she could not believe were ever likely to be realised; "yet of one thing be sure, namely, that he will seek for you. As time goes on he will learn the truth--how, I cannot tell, yet surely he must learn it--and then--and then no power on earth, nothing short of the will of God will prevent him from seeking for you."
"And finding me dead. Here, or in the new land to which we go."
"The new land to which we go!" Marion echoed, scornfully. "The new land to which we go! I doubt if that will ever be. If it were not for these cursed irons we should be free now--free for ever. We could disperse singly, or in couples, wander forth over France, even seek other lands. And--and you could write to him."
"Ah!" Laure exclaimed. "Write to him! To do that! Oh, Marion, Marion, you are so strong, so brave! Set us free! Set us free! Set us free!" Alas! that Marion should have spoken those words, or have let them fall on Laure's ears, thus raising desires and expectations never to be gratified. There was no freedom to come to them--none from so awful a captivity as that which was now to enslave them.
For, even as Laure uttered her wail for freedom, which was born of her companion's hopeful words, the atom of liberty they possessed--the liberty of being able to remove from this fever-tainted spot to some other that remained still unpoisoned by the breath of the pestilence, although shackled and chained altogether--was taken away.
There came up swiftly behind them a band of men; they were a number of convicts, drawn from the galleys lying at the Quai de Riveneuve, as well as several of the beggars of Marseilles, known as "the crows:" beggars who were employed and told off to act under the orders of the sheriffs in removing the dead from the streets, in lighting nightly the fires to purge the city, and in fulfilling the duties of the police--mostly dead themselves by this time.
And in command of them were two sheriffs.