I do not wonder I hesitated, I wonder I resisted. It seemed so small a thing to ask, so great a thing to refuse, that, though half a minute before my mind had been made up, I wavered; wavered miserably. I felt my face burn, I felt the passionate ardour of Madame's eyes as they devoured it, I felt the call of the silence for my answer. And I was near assenting. But as I turned feverishly in my seat to avoid Madame's look, my hand touched the packet which contained the commission, and the contact wrought a revulsion of feeling. I saw the thing as I had seen it before, and, rightly or wrongly, revolted from that which I had nearly done.
"No," I cried angrily. "I will not! I will not!"
"You coward!" Madame cried with sudden passion. And she sprang up as if to strike me, but sat down again trembling.
"It may be," I said. "But I will not do it."
"Why? Why? Why?" she cried.
"Because I carry that commission; and to use it to shelter M. Froment were a thing M. Froment would not do himself. That is all."
He shrugged his shoulders, and magnanimously kept silence. But she was furious. "Quixote!" she cried. "Oh, you are intolerable! But you shall suffer for it. Eh, bien, Monsieur, you shall suffer for it!" she repeated vehemently.
"Nay, Madame, you need not threaten," I retorted.
"For if I would, I could not. You forget that M. de Géol is no more than a league behind us, and bound for Nîmes; he may appear at any moment. At best he is sure to lodge where we do to-night. If he finds," I continued drily, "that I have added a brother to my growing family, I do not think that he will take it lightly."
But this, though she must have seen the sense of it, had no effect upon her. "Oh, you are intolerable!" she cried again. "Let me out! Let me out, Monsieur."