She looked fixedly into his eyes.
"You are resolved?"
He smiled back at her.
"I am as stubborn as a mule and no pleadings will move me."
She looked over her shoulder with a shudder.
"Dearest, the candle flickers in the wind. There is a dagger in your girdle. Slay me and yourself."
"You mean it?" he gasped, and she answered firmly:
"By God's Mother and God's Son."
A sudden, wonderful thought flashed through Villon's mind. He had won love, he could not hope to win life, but at least he might so manage as to die a soldier's death and not a knave's. He whispered to her eagerly:
"Then we will spoil old Louis' pleasure yet. Lore, will you marry me here at the foot of the gallows?"