“The letters?”
“Yes, were the letters destroyed,” La Tribe answered relentlessly, “he could do nothing! Nothing! Without that authority the magistrates of Angers would not move. He could do nothing. And men and women and children—men and women and children whose blood will otherwise cry for vengeance, perhaps for vengeance on us who might have saved them—will live! Will live!” he repeated, with a softening eye. And with an all-embracing gesture he seemed to call to witness the open heavens, the sunshine and the summer breeze which wrapped them round. “Will live!”
She drew a deep breath. “And you have brought me here,” she said, “to ask me to do this?”
“I was sent here to ask you to do this.”
“Why me? Why me?” she wailed, and she held out her open hands to him, her face wan and colourless. “You come to me, a woman! Why to me?”
“You are his wife!”
“And he is my husband!”
“Therefore he trusts you,” was the unyielding, the pitiless answer. “You, and you alone, have the opportunity of doing this.”
She gazed at him in astonishment. “And it is you who say that?” she faltered, after a pause. “You who made us one, who now bid me betray him, whom I have sworn to love? To ruin him whom I have sworn to honour?”
“I do!” he answered solemnly. “On my head be the guilt, and on yours the merit.”