He glowered at me for a moment, still ill content. Then, without a word, he made me a gesture to go to her.
She had halted a score of paces away, wondering doubtless what was on foot. I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I lost the expression of her face as I approached, but the manner in which she turned her horse's head uncompromisingly towards her brother, and looked past me--as if I were merely a log in the road--was full of meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under me. I saluted her, trembling. "Mademoiselle," I said, "will you grant me the privilege of your company for a few minutes, as we ride."
"To what purpose, Sir?" she answered, in the coldest voice in which I think a woman ever spoke to a man.
"That I may explain to you a great many things you do not understand," I murmured.
"I prefer to be in the dark," she replied. And her manner said more than her words.
"But, Mademoiselle," I pleaded,--I would not be discouraged,--"you told me one day that you would never judge me hastily again."
"Facts judge you, not I, Sir," she answered icily. "I am not sufficiently on a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank God."
I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we stood was warm. "Still--once before you thought the same!" I exclaimed. "Afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may be so again, Mademoiselle."
"Impossible," she said.
That stung me. "No!" I said fiercely. "It is not impossible. It is you who are impossible! It is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have done much, very much, in the last three days to make things lighter for you. I ask you now to do something for me which can cost you nothing."