She listened dumbly; her attitude unchanging, as she had stood in other days, under the shadow of the boughs, to receive the stripes of her master.
"He shall be free—to forget me."
The words were barely audible, but they were inflexible, as they were echoed through her locked teeth.
The eyes of her tormentor watched her with a wondering admiration; yet he could not resist the pleasure of an added cruelty, as the men of the torture-chambers of old strained once more the fair fettered form of a female captive, that they might see a little longer those bright limbs quiver, and those bare nerves heave.
"Well; be it so if you will it. Only think long enough. For strong though you are, you are also weak; for you are of your mother's sex, Folle-Farine. You may repent. Think well. You are no more to him than your eponym, the mill-dust. You have said so to yourself. But you are beautiful in your barbarism; and here you are always near him; and with a man who has no gold to give, a woman need have few rivals to fear. If his heart eat itself out here in solitude, soon or late he will be yours, Folle-Farine. A man, be he what he will, cannot live long without some love, more or less, for some woman. A little while, and your Norse-god alone here, disappointed, embittered, friendless, galled by poverty, and powerless to escape, will turn to you, and find a sweetness on your lips, a balm in your embrace, an opium draught for an hour, at least, in that wonderful beauty of yours. A woman who is beautiful, and who has youth, and who has passion, need never fail to make a love-light beam in the eyes of a man, if only she know how to wait, if only she be the sole blossom that grows in his pathway, the sole fruit within reach of his hands. Keep him here, and soon or late, out of sheer despair of any other paradise, he will make his paradise in your breast. Do you doubt? Child, I have known the world many years, but this one thing I have ever known to be stronger than any strength a man can bring against it to withstand it—this one thing which fate has given you, the bodily beauty of a woman."
His voice ceased softly in the twilight—this voice of Mephistopheles—which tempted her but for the sheer sole pleasure of straining this strength to see if it should break—of deriding this faith to see if it would bend—of alluring this soul to see if it would fall.
She stood abased in a piteous shame—the shame that any man should thus read her heart, which seemed to burn and wither up all liberty, all innocence, all pride in her, and leave her a thing too utterly debased to bear the gaze of any human eyes,—to bear the light of any noonday sun.
And yet the terrible sweetness of the words tempted her with such subtle force: the passions of a fierce, amorous race ran in her blood—the ardor and the liberty of an outlawed and sensual people were bred with her flesh and blood: to have been the passion-toy of the man she loved for one single day,—to have felt for one brief summer hour his arms hold her and his kisses answer hers, she would have consented to die a hundred deaths in uttermost tortures when the morrow should have dawned, and would have died rejoicing, crying to the last breath,—
"I have lived: it is enough!"
He might be hers! The mere thought, uttered in another's voice, thrilled through her with a tumultuous ecstasy, hot as flame, potent as wine.