A little while back that had not seemed so difficult a thing. From the day of our first meeting--and in a higher degree since that afternoon when she had lashed me with her scorn--my views of her, and my feelings towards her, had been strangely made up of antagonism and sympathy; of repulsion, because in her past and present she was so different from me; of yearning, because she was a woman and friendless. Then I had duped her and bought her confidence by returning the jewels, and in a measure I had sated my vengeance; and then, as a consequence, sympathy had again begun to get the better, until now I hardly knew my own mind or what I intended. I did not know, in fact, what I intended. I stood there in the garden with that conviction suddenly new-born in my mind; and then, in a moment, I heard her step and turned to find her behind me.
Her face was like April, smiles breaking through her tears. As she stood with a tall hedge of sunflowers behind her, I started to see how beautiful she was. "I am here in search of you, M. de Barthe," she said, colouring slightly, perhaps because my eyes betrayed my thought, "to thank you. You have not fought, and yet you have conquered. My woman has just been with me, and she tells me that they are going!"
"Going?" I said. "Yes, Mademoiselle, they are leaving the house."
She did not understand my reservation. "What magic have you used?" she said, almost gaily--it was wonderful how hope had changed her. "Moreover, I am curious to learn how you managed to avoid fighting."
"After taking a blow?" I said bitterly.
"Monsieur, I did not mean that," she said reproachfully. But her face clouded. I saw that, viewed in this light--in which I suppose she had not seen it--the matter perplexed her still more.
I took a sudden resolution. "Have you ever heard, Mademoiselle," I said gravely, plucking off while I spoke the dead leaves from a plant beside me, "of a gentleman by name De Berault? Known in Paris, so I have heard, by the sobriquet of the Black Death?"
"The duellist?" she answered, in wonder. "Yes, I have heard of him. He killed a young gentleman of this province at Nancy two years back. It was a sad story," she continued, shuddering, "of a dreadful man. God keep our friends from such!"
"Amen!" I said quietly. But, in spite of myself, I could not meet her eyes.
"Why?" she answered, quickly taking alarm at my silence. "What of him, M. de Barthe? Why have you mentioned him?"