"Yes, Yuki, darling," cried Pierre, coming to her. "He will free you honorably. You shall be mine forever, and we shall soon forget these horrors of the past. I will give him the paper if you wish it. What do I care for Ronsard or for France if I, with this, can buy your life-long happiness?"
Yuki shivered in all the length of her limbs. Haganè turned away. His face could not be seen with the utterance of his next words. Curiously enough they sounded apologetic.
"It was the only way I saw, Yuki, the only bribe that such a man might take. Your body, soiled already, have I offered. Do you understand?"
Pierre's gaze, too, had fallen. Shame weighed all lids. An abnormal silence came to the little group. Yuki broke it with a long, long breath, as of relief and comprehension. The men looked toward her. Haganè clenched a brown fist to a cluster of throbbing veins. But the Frenchman gaped, incredulous, and gaped again. For Yuki was smiling at something far away. A light already not of earth lay on her waxen brow. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, now, at last, I understand. You will not force the gift, Haganè. It must be mine. Why, Pierre, look not so strange because, at last, I understand. You cannot know yet, poor Pierre, but soon you will know too. I must be yours, of course. Have you not planned, and spied, and—stolen for this?"
"Yuki," said Haganè, in a deeply troubled voice, "if Monsieur Le Beau by any chance should give the paper—unconditionally should refuse the price—"
"No! no!" she cried, with a quick note of terror, and sprang to her feet again. "Where would be my atonement, my reparation? Think it not, Lord. See that your great mercy be not merciless. I shall go, gladly, gladly, to Monsieur Le Beau; my heart falters not for myself,—but him. It is a cruel deed to him."
"And well deserved," muttered Haganè.
"Being myself weak, Lord," said the young wife, "I feel that the deserving is, after all, the hardest pang."
Pierre dashed his hand across his brow, and went to a small sideboard for a liqueur. Again these strange people were talking their mystic gibberish. Yuki was more clear, indeed. She had stated openly to her husband that she wished to be given to another man. Neither seemed to feel the least delicacy or shame. In Pierre's fastidious thought this fact made a tiny stain for Yuki. The old brute evidently wanted to be rid of her, and she, eagerly accepting freedom, did not shrink from claiming at once a more desirable companionship. At the last moment should he, Pierre, refuse to grasp the prize he had turned criminal in pursuing? No, a thousand times no! Yuki's friendless condition demanded his deepest pity. It was with a faint touch of condescension that he leaned to her, saying, "Do not falter now, Yuki. Our goal is in sight. I will be true to you. I will yet make you happy!"
"Happy! happy!" echoed the woman in a ghost's voice. "All foreigners think and say only that one thing,—happy! Pierre, Pierre, I need so much more than—happiness!"