I bowed low. ‘If you say you did not, mademoiselle, that is enough,’ I answered.
‘Nay, but do not let me do you an injustice, M. de Marsac,’ she rejoined, speaking more quickly and in an altered tone. ‘If you can show me the favour I gave you, I shall, of course, be convinced. Seeing is believing, you know,’ she added, with a light nervous laugh, and a gesture of something like shyness.
If I had not sufficiently regretted my carelessness, and loss of the bow at the time, I did so now. I looked at her in silence, and saw her face, that had for a moment shown signs of feeling, almost of shame, grow slowly hard again.
‘Well, sir?’ she said impatiently. ‘The proof is easy.’
‘It was taken from me; I believe, by M. de Rosny,’ I answered lamely, wondering what ill-luck had led her to put the question and press it to this point.
‘It was taken from you!’ she exclaimed, rising and confronting me with the utmost suddenness, while her eyes flashed, and her little hand crumpled the mask beyond future usefulness. ‘It was taken from you, sir!’ she repeated, her voice and her whole frame trembling with anger and disdain. ‘Then I thank you, I prefer my version. Yours is impossible. For let me tell you, when Mademoiselle de la Vire does confer a favour, it will be on a man with the power and the wit—and the constancy, to keep it, even from M. de Rosny!’
Her scorn hurt, though it did not anger me. I felt it to be in a measure deserved, and raged against myself rather than against her. But aware through all of the supreme importance of placing her in safety, I subjected my immediate feelings to the exigencies of the moment and stooped to an argument which would, I thought, have weight though private pleading failed.
‘Putting myself aside, mademoiselle,’ I said, with more formality than I had yet used, ‘there is one consideration which must weigh with you. The king—’
‘The king!’ she cried, interrupting me violently, her face hot with passion and her whole person instinct with stubborn self-will. ‘I shall not see the king!’
‘You will not see the king?’ I repeated in amazement.