“He is the only creature that loves me, Maurice—the only man who cares for me. He has done no harm. He only wanted to be free—was it not natural? You can save him if you like. I only ask for his life. What does it matter to you? A miserable prisoner—his death would be of no use. Let him live, Maurice.”
Maurice laughed. “What have I to do with it?”
“You are the principal witness against him. If you say that he behaved well—and he did behave well, you know: many men would have left you to starve—they won't hang him.”
“Oh, won't they! That won't make much difference.”
“Ah, Maurice, be merciful!” She bent towards him, and tried to retain his hand, but he withdrew it.
“You're a nice sort of woman to ask me to help your lover—a man who left me on that cursed coast to die, for all he cared,” he said, with a galling recollection of his humiliation of five years back. “Save him! Confound him, not I!”
“Ah, Maurice, you will.” She spoke with a suppressed sob in her voice. “What is it to you? You don't care for me now. You beat me, and turned me out of doors, though I never did you wrong. This man was a husband to me—long, long before I met you. He never did you any harm; he never will. He will bless you if you save him, Maurice.”
Frere jerked his head impatiently. “Bless me!” he said. “I don't want his blessings. Let him swing. Who cares?”
Still she persisted, with tears streaming from her eyes, with white arms upraised, on her knees even, catching at his coat, and beseeching him in broken accents. In her wild, fierce beauty and passionate abandonment she might have been a deserted Ariadne—a suppliant Medea. Anything rather than what she was—a dissolute, half-maddened woman, praying for the pardon of her convict husband.
Maurice Frere flung her off with an oath. “Get up!” he cried brutally, “and stop that nonsense. I tell you the man's as good as dead for all I shall do to save him.”