"It is Pierre," she said, trembling violently, and turning first crimson and then a dull sallow hue.
"I know it, Jeanne. It was excellent of you! Excellent! It is long since you have done such a day's work."
"You will not give him up?" she gasped.
"My faith, I shall!" he answered, affecting, and perhaps really feeling, wonder at her simplicity. "He is five crowns, my girl! You do not understand. He is worth five crowns and the risk nothing at all."
If he had been angry, if he had shown anything of the fury of the suspicious husband, if he had been about to do this out of jealousy or revenge or passion she would have quailed before him, though she had done him no wrong, save the wrong of mercy and pity. But his spirit was too mean for the great passions; he felt only the mean and sordid impulses, which to a woman are the most hateful. And instead of quailing, she looked at him with flashing eyes. "I shall warn him," she said.
"It will not help him," he answered, sitting still, and feeling anew the edge of the hatchet with his fingers.
"It will help him," she retorted. "He shall go. He shall escape before they come." She rose impetuously from her seat.
"I have locked the door!"
"Give me the key!" she panted. "Give me the key, I say!" She stood before him, her trembling hands outstretched, her figure drawn to its full height. Her look was such that he rose and retreated behind the table, still retaining the hatchet in his grasp.
"Stand back!" he said sullenly. "You may awaken him, if you please, my girl. It will not avail him. Do you not understand, fool, that he is worth five crowns? Five crowns? And listen! It is too late now. They are here!"