Gabrielle pressed his hand.
“You dear, dear boy!” she said. “You bring me back my youth, that happy, happy time when I was generously ignorant and impetuously wrong! How I loved that time, and how I love these things in you! But, my dear Jean, in the old days to be a Knight Errant was a simple matter; you rushed out into a wood, found a demoiselle in distress, and ran a wicked villain through the body. Things are not quite so simple nowadays; the distress is the same, but everything else is different. The demoiselle probably is entirely in the wrong. The villain is possibly a kind-hearted misunderstood person, trying to get his deserts, and if you run him through the body you will be certain to suffer for it, without at all profiting the lady. As for me—what can I do to help you? If I give four hundred francs to this poor girl, which would be my impulse, of course, however much a secret we make of it, in fact the moment we attempt to make a secret of it, it would be all over Paris by to-morrow! And I should simply ruin my poor old Louis! I don’t speak of my good name, though that wouldn’t be worth an hour’s purchase. Paris has a quick brain, as you know, and unless a quick brain is also a very pure one it is apt to jump at incredibly ugly conclusions. I should be accused of privately buying one of Louis’ pupils off to cover up a scandal! And it will be the same if you do it for the little Margot. And what right have I—or you either, my dear Jean, to interfere with poor Louis’ business? He may have his reasons for pushing this affair, reasons which you and I know nothing at all about, but which, if they were any affairs of ours, might appear to be very good ones. Only, don’t you see, mon petit, they aren’t?”
Jean sat silent under Gabrielle’s quick, soft words; they fell upon him and drowned his reason. He had finished his work on her delicate hands, but they still lay in his, and though he had ceased to work it is possible that they had not. He was so near Gabrielle that he could see the quick heaving of her breast, and feel her very thoughts run into his answering blood. He tried valiantly to keep his head clear and to think of Margot; but what is a boy of twenty-three in the hands of a woman like Gabrielle when he loves her, and she does not love him? He fought, fought better than Madame had expected he would fight, but that is all that can be said for him.
“Then you can do nothing?” he whispered.
“I don’t say that,” said Gabrielle very gently. “I even hope we may be able to do something; but nothing immediately, nothing rash! Will you leave it all to me, dear Jean?”
Jean hesitated. Even now he hesitated.
Gabrielle withdrew her hands. He caught them back.
“Yes! yes!” he stammered. “Everything—everything to you, Gabrielle!”
Then she let him kiss her hands. She did not need to give him any more. She had only, after a moment or two, to say:
“But Jean—I trusted you——”