She tore an ostrich-plume from her fan in her momentary passion.
'You do not hesitate to confess how you betray each in turn; Barbaresco to the Regent; the Regent to me; and now, no doubt, me to the Regent.'
'As for the last, madonna, to betray you I need not now be here. I could have supplied the Regent with all the evidence he needs against you at the same time that I supplied the evidence against the others.'
She was silent, turning it over in her mind. And because her mind was acute, she saw the proof his words afforded. But because afraid, she mistrusted proof.
'It may be part of the trap,' she complained. 'If it were not, why should you remain after denouncing my friends? The aims you pretend would have been fully served by that.'
His answer was prompt and complete.
'If I had departed, you would never have known the answer of those men whom you trust, nor would you have known that there is a Judas amongst them already. It was necessary to warn you.'
'Yes,' she said slowly. 'I see, I think.' And then in sudden revolt against the conviction he was forcing upon her, and in tones which if low were vehement to the point of fierceness: 'Necessary!' she cried, echoing the word he had used. 'Necessary! How was it necessary? Whence this necessity of yours? A week ago you did not know me. Yet for me, who am nothing to you, whose service carries no reward, you pretend yourself prepared to labour and to take risks involving even your very life. That is what you ask me to believe. You suppose me mad, I think.'
As she faced him now, she fancied that a smile broke upon that face so indistinctly seen. His voice, as he answered her, was very soft.
'It is not mad to believe in madness. Madness exists, madonna. Set me down as suffering from it. The air of the world is proving too strong and heady, perhaps, for one bred in cloisters. It has intoxicated me, I think.'