“I thought,” he faltered—“I believed!...” and could go no further. She retorted, stretching as gracefully as a leopardess, smiling with a touch of roguery, her rosy tongue peeping from between her teeth of pearl:
“You thought me an angel, who am nothing but a woman. What! would an angel have fired that shot at the Foreign Ministry?” She shrugged her white shoulders. “What! and let you bear the whole affair upon your shoulders for fear lest the Red Republicans should take a stiletto-vengeance? And pay you in kisses and the rest as I have done?”
“It was no mere sordid bargain!... You loved me!” Dunoisse cried out in misery. “You gave me yourself for love, not for fear or gain!”
“Oh! as for that,” said Henriette, with a cynical inflection, “I loved you, and I love you uncommonly well to-day. But your love is not to deprive me of my liberty—that must be understood!... There, there, my poor dear boy!...”
He had sunk down upon the gray velvet divan, looking so wan and haggard, and yet so handsome in his despair and wretchedness, that her shallow heart was stirred to pity, and she went swiftly to his side. He threw an arm about her, drew her to him, and said, looking up at her with wistful entreaty, and speaking in tones that had suddenly become pitiful and childlike:
“Dearest Henriette, I will do everything you ask me—everything!... You shall not have one single wish ungratified! Only do not go to the Palace without me, I beg of you, Henriette!”
He told himself that she was yielding, pressed her to him, and hid his burning forehead and aching eyes against her. It was a symbolical action, that willful blinding, presaging what was to come.... She knelt down before him, wound her soft white arms about him, and drew his head to rest upon her bosom, so that his cheek rested on the flaming mark that so short a time back had said to him in red letters, “She is false to you!” She said, holding him closer, blinding and drugging him with her breath, her contact, her voice:
“Well, then, very well! Henriette is never unkind or cruel.... It shall be as you choose. Only do not thwart me or upbraid me, Hector dearest. I am of Spanish blood—you should remember it!... How hot your forehead is! Have you, too, a headache? That is from traveling all night. How I hate those jolting railway-carriages! Fais dodo, poor boy!”
She rocked him upon her breast, smiling to see the rigid lines of mental anguish relax and smooth out under her caresses. And as she rocked, she sang in a velvety cooing voice a little witch-rhyme of Catalonia, meaning everything or nothing, just as the hearer happened to be a Catholic or a Calvinist ... a horrible little rhyme, dealing with a cat and the cupboard of the Archbishop, set to a soothing lullaby....
Hushaby!—Honor, and Principle, and Religion. Sleep, sleep well! rocked on the bosom of Desire.