“Well, you wished to see me. Here I am! What do you want of me?”
“To ask you frankly whether it is true, Marsa, that you are about to marry Prince Zilah.”
She tried to laugh; but her laugh broke nervously off. She said, however, ironically:
“Oh! is it for that that you are here?”
“Yes.”
“It was perfectly useless, then, for you to take the trouble: you ask me a thing which you know well, which all the world knows, which all the world must have told you, since you had the audacity to be present at that fete to-day.”
“That is true,” said Michel, coldly; “but I only learned it by chance. I wished to hear it from your own lips.”
“Do I owe you any account of my conduct?” asked Marsa, with crushing hauteur.
He was silent a moment, strode across the room, laid his hat down upon the little table, and suddenly becoming humble, not in attitude, but in voice, said:
“Listen, Marsa: you are a hundred times right to hate me. I have deceived you, lied to you. I have conducted myself in a manner unworthy of you, unworthy of myself. But to atone for my fault—my crime, if you will—I am ready to do anything you order, to be your miserable slave, in order to obtain the pardon which I have come to ask of you, and which I will ask on my knees, if you command me to do so.”