For just an instant the girl drew away from him with suspicion in her eyes, and something else, alertly defiant. Then she put out her hands to his arm.
"You may be what you like, dear Ste. Marie," she said. "And say what you like. I will take it all—and swallow it alive—good as gold. What are you going to do to me?"
"I've always been fair with you, haven't I?" he urged. "I've had disagreeable things to say or do but—you knew always that I liked you and—where my sympathies were."
"Always! Always, mon cher!" she cried. "I trusted you always in everything. And there is no one else I trust. No one! No one!
"Ste. Marie!"
"What then?" he asked.
"Ste. Marie," she said, "why did you never fall in love with me, as the other men did?"
"I wonder," said he. "I don't know. Upon my word, I really don't know." He was so serious about it that the girl burst into a shriek of laughter. And in the end he laughed too.
"I expect it was because I liked you too well," he said at last. "But come! We're forgetting my lecture. Listen to your grandpère Ste. Marie! I have heard—certain things—rumours—what you will. Perhaps they are foolish lies, and I hope they are. But if not, if the fear I saw in Stewart's face when you came here to-night was—not without cause, let me beg you to have a care. You're much too savage, my dear child. Don't be so foolish as to—well, turn comedy into the other thing. In the first place it's not worth while, and in the second place it recoils, always. Revenge may be sweet. I don't know. But nowadays, with police courts and all that, it entails much more subsequent annoyance that it is worth. Be wise, Olga!"
"Some things, Ste. Marie," said the golden lady, "are worth all the consequences that may follow them." She watched Captain Stewart across the room where he stood chatting with a little group of people, and her beautiful face was as hard as marble, and her eyes were as dark as a stormy night, and her mouth, for an instant, was almost like an animal's mouth, cruel and relentless.