"It was for that I am here without an invitation," she answered quickly. "I have many times given you occasion to think me entirely without manners. I have often been very rude to you. I wish to ask your pardon for my silly speeches at the table, and for all my unamiability, and to assure you I have not forgotten your great services to me, and I am not ungrateful. It is because I have naturally a very bad temper; and now I believe I am not quite well, I am so irritable of late."
Several times I had tried to interrupt her; I could not bear to have her humiliate herself to me (for I was sure it must be a humiliation to one of her haughty temper). But she would not listen to my interruptions; she went steadily on with a voice so low and sweet and sad it quite unmanned me.
Yet because I thought her voice trembled, and in the moonlight (for the late moon was now well up in the sky) I was sure I saw something bright glistening on her long lashes, and because my heart was torn for her, and I was seized with a horrible fear that she might weep, and I would not know what to do—for all these reasons I spoke quickly and lightly:
"Mademoiselle, you have the temper of an angel, and if sometimes you lose it, I fear it is because only an angel with wings could be patient with a blundering giant like me."
"You are no blunderer, monsieur," she said gravely; "and if you are a giant, you are one of the good kind who use their strength and their courage in rescuing distressed damsels. I hope they will not all requite you as badly as I have done."
"Mademoiselle,"—I spoke as gravely as she had spoken,—"I hope you will not let the remembrance of any service I have been able to render you prove a burden to you. I would risk much more in your service, if the occasion offered, than I risked then, and find my delight in so doing." And then I added: "I wish you would promise me that if you should ever need such service again—if you are ever in peril of any kind, and I am in reach—that you will call on me."
Mademoiselle hesitated a moment before she replied:
"You are heaping coals of fire on my head, monsieur; you are far kinder to me than I deserve, but—I promise."
"Thank you, mademoiselle; you have given me my reward, and if you were ever unamiable to me, you have fully atoned. Sometimes I think, mademoiselle," I went on, inwardly trembling but determined, "that you did not esteem it so great a service that I rendered you—that perhaps you had rather not have been rescued. Am I wrong?"
I was looking down on her and watching her narrowly as I spoke. I could see, even by the uncertain light of the moon, that she went suddenly white, and there was a perceptible pause before she spoke.