She answered him with a little nervous laugh, which the intense emotion of the moment provoked. Nor was there wanting a certain contempt for his threat.
“Your home is desolate if you choose to make it so,” she said, looking him full in the face. “The folly will be yours. As for your honour, I am sorry you value it so lightly. Does honour betray a friend because he is wounded and helpless? Oh, you will deal with Brandon very easily—his foot is crushed, and he cannot stand. It was crushed because he wished to bring me news of you, Edmond.”
“As he has told you. And you are simple enough to believe it? He, a German soldier, comes into Strasburg to help me, a French hussar. It is a story for a fairy book. I do not read books like that. I tell myself that when a man risks his life to see a woman, she is not as other women to him. A true wife would not have spoken to such a man. You have seen him every day; you have been to his rooms; you have helped him to-night to get back to the German lines and to tell them that Strasburg is at death’s door, a burning city, a city which can no longer help France. Is that the work that my wife should do? God help me—my wife!”
He stood before her, white now with anger, as thus he weighed the evidence and seemed to judge her story for himself. She did not utter any word nor seek to defend herself. If he, Edmond, her lover, could believe that, then, indeed, would she be for ever silent. But he continued relentlessly:
“You love this man; why do you deny it?”
A cry which was half a moan came to her lips.
“Oh, my God—my God!”
“But I shall kill him, Beatrix. My honour can wait for that. He is in the city still. No other now shall pay that debt. It is mine—you hear, mine. All your acting will not save him. And I shall see you suffer as I must suffer, because I thought you were the best—the truest woman in France!”
Her face was tearless when she lifted it to answer him.