"When you lose it, eh?" he repeated. "Well, when you do, I'll break your neck. Do you understand that?"
The girl continued to powder her nose.
"Who would marry me?" she remarked indifferently. "Also, now it is too late for me to become a religieuse like—"
"You'll carry on the business!" he growled. "That's what you'll do—with Jacques, when the Sbirs de Biribi let him loose. As for marrying, you can think it over when you are thirty. You'll have a dot by that time, if the damned Government lets me alone. And a woman with a dot need not worry about marriage."
The girl was now busy with her beautiful chestnut hair; Wildresse's pock-marked features softened.
"Allons," he said in his harsh voice, "lilies grow prettiest on dunghills. Also, you are like me—serious, not silly. I have no fears. Besides, you are where I have my eye on you."
"If I am what I am it is because I prefer it, not on account of your eye," she said listlessly.
"Is that so!" he roared. "All the same, continue to prefer virtue and good conduct, and I'll continue to use my two eyes, nom de Dieu! And if any strangers who look like Germans come into the café—any strangers at all, no matter what they look like—keep your eyes on them, do you hear?"
"I hear," said the girl Philippa.
The web of fate had settled over her at last.