"Are you the Red Mouse?" she said suddenly.
He looked at her surprised, and for the moment perplexed; then he laughed—his little low cynical laugh.
"What makes you think that?"
"I do not know. You look like it—that is all. He has made one sketch of me as I shall be when I am dead; and the Red Mouse sits on my chest, and it is glad. You see that, by its glance. I never asked him what he meant by it. Some evil, I think; and you look like it. You have the same triumph in your eye."
He laughed again, not displeased, as she had thought that he would be.
"He has painted you so? I must see that. But believe me, Folle-Farine, I shall wish for my triumph before your beauty is dead—if I am indeed, the Red Mouse."
She shrunk a little with an unconscious and uncontrollable gesture of aversion.
"I must go," she said abruptly. "The mules wait. Remember him, and I will remember you."
He smiled.
"Wait: have you thought what a golden key for him will do for you when it unlocks your eagle's cage and unbinds his wings?"