“All very fine,” returned the lady. “With whom do you pass your days? and which am I to believe, your words or your actions?”
“Anna, the devil take you, are you blind?” cried Gondremark. “You know me. Am I likely to care for such a preciosa? ’Tis hard that we should have been together for so long, and you should still take me for a troubadour. But if there is one thing that I despise and deprecate, it is all such figures in Berlin wool. Give me a human woman—like yourself. You are my mate; you were made for me; you amuse me like the play. And what have I to gain that I should pretend to you? If I do not love you, what use are you to me? Why, none. It is as clear as noonday.”
“Do you love me, Heinrich?” she asked, languishing. “Do you truly?”
“I tell you,” he cried, “I love you next after myself. I should be all abroad if I had lost you.”
“Well, then,” said she, folding up the paper and putting it calmly in her pocket, “I will believe you, and I join the plot. Count upon me. At midnight, did you say? It is Gordon, I see, that you have charged with it. Excellent; he will stick at nothing.”
Gondremark watched her suspiciously. “Why do you take the paper?” he demanded. “Give it here.”
“No,” she returned; “I mean to keep it. It is I who must prepare the stroke; you cannot manage it without me; and to do my best I must possess the paper. Where shall I find Gordon? In his rooms?” She spoke with a rather feverish self-possession.
“Anna,” he said sternly, the black, bilious countenance of his palace rôle taking the place of the more open favour of his hours at home, “I ask you for that paper. Once, twice, and thrice.”
“Heinrich,” she returned, looking him in the face, “take care. I will put up with no dictation.”