Now, it was no longer her duty to him which loomed large, but her duty to the innocent, to the victims of the massacre which she might have stayed, to the people of her faith whom she had abandoned, to the women and children whose death-warrant she had preserved. Now, she perceived that a part more divine had never fallen to woman, nor a responsibility so heavy been laid upon woman. Nor guilt more dread!
She writhed in misery, thinking of it. What had she done? She could hear afar off the sounds of the camp; an occasional outcry, a snatch of laughter. And the cry and the laughter rang in her ears, a bitter mockery. This summer camp, to what was it the prelude? This forbearance on her husband’s part, in what would it end? Were not the one and the other cruel make-believes? Two days, and the men who laughed beside the water would slay and torture with equal zest. A little, and the husband who now chose to be generous would show himself in his true colours. And it was for the sake of such as these that she had played the coward. That she had laid up for herself endless remorse. That henceforth the cries of the innocent would haunt her dreams.
Racked by such thoughts she did not hear his step, and it was his shadow falling across her feet which first warned her of his presence. She looked up, saw him, and involuntarily recoiled. Then, seeing the change in his face—
“Oh! Monsieur,” she stammered, affrighted, her hand pressed to her side, “I ask your pardon! You startled me!”
“So it seems,” he answered. And he stood over her regarding her dryly.
“I am not quite—myself yet,” she murmured. His look told her that her start had betrayed her feelings.
Alas! the plan of taking a woman by force has drawbacks, and among others this one: that he must be a sanguine husband who deems her heart his, and a husband without jealousy, whose suspicions are not aroused by the faintest flush or the lightest word. He knows that she is his unwillingly, a victim, not a mistress; and behind every bush beside the road and behind every mask in the crowd he espies a rival.
Moreover, where women are in question, who is always strong? Or who can say how long he will pursue this plan or that? A man of sternest temper, Count Hannibal had set out on a path of conduct carefully and deliberately chosen; knowing—and he still knew—that if he abandoned it he had little to hope, if the less to fear. But the proof of fidelity which the Countess had just given him had blown to a white heat the smouldering flame in his heart, and Madame St. Lo’s gibes, which should have fallen as cold water alike on his hopes and his passion, had but fed the desire to know the best. For all that, he might not have spoken now, if he had not caught her look of affright; strange as it sounds, that look, which of all things should have silenced him and warned him that the time was not yet, stung him out of patience. Suddenly the man in him carried him away.
“You still fear me, then?” he said, in a voice hoarse and unnatural. “Is it for what I do or for what I leave undone that you hate me, Madame? Tell me, I beg, for—”
“For neither!” she said, trembling. His eyes, hot and passionate, were on her, and the blood had mounted to his brow. “For neither! I do not hate you, Monsieur!”