"I am saying that I refuse to listen any more to your insults. I am saying that I am ashamed—utterly ashamed—that you should so have thought of me that you dare offer them. I am not Duchess of Châteauroux!" She placed her foot on the fallen paper, and stammered over the French words as she spoke, for she was thinking in English now. "God save me from it! I am no lady of the palace of the Queen—I am not of Versailles, nor of France. I owe allegiance to no French King. I come from a country that is true and sweet and pure, where they hate and despise your French ways, your unholy customs, your laws, your manners, your dishonoring of honest things, your treatment of women. I am honest. I hate myself for having lived among you for months as I have done. I am going away, I will leave here, this place, to-night. If my—my husband will not take me—I shall go back alone, by the way I came, to my country, where the men, if they are awkward, are upright, if the women have not etiquette, they are pure.—Let me go!—Let me go!"
"'I AM NOT THE DUCHESS OF CHATEAUROUX'"
Louis, in a sudden access of fury, had sprung forward and seized her by the wrists. Deborah's temper was fully roused at last; her blood poured hotly through her veins. Her life had become a little thing in comparison to the laws for which she was speaking, the sense of right which seemed to hold no part in this French order of things. Bracing herself as she might in her high-heeled slippers, she suddenly threw all her weight forward against the man, taking him off his guard, and so forcing him back that he was obliged to loosen his hold of her in order to regain equilibrium. The instant that she was free Deborah turned and fled to the door. She flung herself bodily against it. It was locked from the outside.
"Good Heaven!" muttered the girl, in English.
"What is it you say, dear madame?" inquired the King, smiling in amused triumph as she turned to him, still grasping the handle of the door.
"You are unfair! This is unlawful! I am not to blame!" she said, her voice quivering.
"Madame—my dear Deborah—who could be unfair with you?" He came towards her, looking not too well pleased that she shrank back as far as possible at his approach. When she was close against the immovable door, and he just before her, he stopped, looked at her for a long moment with a peculiar, half-patronizing smile, then suddenly fell upon his knee at her feet, and captured one of her unwilling hands.
"Deborah—my Deborah—quel drôle de nom!—let us now forget locked doors, let us forget Majesties and riches and favors, and let us think only that here am I, Louis, thus before you, declaring my love. Let us make as though we were two peasants. I swear to you that to me you are all in all. Without you I cannot live. All the days of my life I will work for you, will cherish you. Now tell me if you will not accept such love?"