The voice, the child's look would have disarmed him, but the words he had overheard came back, and made his torment.
"If it came into your heart, I know who put it there," he said. "And what else came with it? What else were you to do? Do you forget I overheard? If I thought you had lent yourself to be a tool, to influence, to bribe—mon Dieu, if I thought that——"
"Monsieur!" but the soft, agitated protest fell unheard.
"I should kill you—yes, I think that I should kill you," he said in a cold, level voice.
She moved a step towards him then, and if her voice had trembled, her eyes were clear and untroubled as they met his full.
"You shall not need to," she said quietly, and there was a long pause.
It was he who looked away at last, and then she spoke.
"I asked you at no one's prompting," she said softly. "See, Monsieur, let there be truth between us. That at least I can give, and will—yes, always. He, the man you saw, asked me to help him, to help others, and I told him no, my hands were tied. If he had asked for ever, I must still have said the same thing; and if it had cut my heart in two, I would still have said it. But about Marguerite, that was different. She knows nothing of any plots, she is no conspirator. I would not ask, if it touched your honour. I would not indeed."
"Are you sure?" he asked in a strange voice, and she answered his question with another.
"Would you have pledged your honour if you had not been sure?"