“Down there at Sainte-Marie I offered her peace,” said Marescal in harsh accents. “She repulsed me. All the worse for her! To-day is too late!” [[206]]
Bregeac approached him with his hands stretched out in a gesture of supplication and began an incoherent prayer. He cut it short.
“It’s useless!” he cried. “All the worse for her! All the worse for you! She wouldn’t have me—she shall have nobody. And it’s mere justice. To pay her debt for the crime she has committed is to pay me for the harm she has done me. She must be punished; and I avenge myself in punishing her. All the worse for her!”
He emphasized his phrases by stamping his foot or banging on the table. Then giving way to the natural grossness of his nature he turned on Aurelie and cried: “Look at her, Bregeac! Is she thinking for a moment of asking my forgiveness? If you bow your head, does she show any humiliation? And do you know the reason of this dumbness, of this sustained and intractable hardness? It’s because she still hopes, Bregeac. Yes, she hopes; I’m certain of it. She hopes that the man who has saved her three times from my claws, will save her a fourth.”
Aurelie never stirred. He snatched up the receiver of the telephone and rang up the Prefecture of Police.
“Hullo! Is that the Prefecture? Put me on to Monsieur Phillipe—it’s M. Marescal speaking.”
He turned to the young girl and held the second receiver to her ear. Aurelie did not stir.
Some one answered at the other end of the line: [[207]]
“Is that you, Marescal?”
“Yes. Listen. There is a person here to whom I wish to afford complete certainty. Answer my questions exactly.”