"You have just left a public place of pestilence?"
"Yes."
"And you know that every one's hand is against you because you are nameless and bastard, and come of a proscribed people, who are aliens alike in every land?"
"I am Folle-Farine; yes."
For a moment he was silent. The simple, pathetic acceptance of the fate that made her name—merely because hers—a symbol of all things despised, and desolate, and forsaken, touched his heart and moved him to a sorrowful pity. But the pity died, and tie cruelty remained alive behind it.
He bent on her the magnetic power of his bright, sardonic, meaning eyes.
"Well—be Folle-Farine still. Why not? But let Folle-Farine mean no longer a beggar, an outcast, a leper, a thing attainted, proscribed, and forever suspected; but let it mean on the ear of every man that hears it the name of the most famous, the most imperious, the most triumphant, the most beautiful woman of her time; a woman of whom the world says, 'look on her face and die—you have lived enough.'"
Her breath came and went as she listened; the blood in her face flushed and paled; she trembled violently, and her whole frame seemed to dilate and strengthen and vibrate with the electric force of that subtlest temptation.
"I!" she murmured brokenly.
"Yes, you. All that I say you shall be: homeless, tribeless, nameless, nationless, though you stand there now, Folle-Farine."