"Mademoiselle, there is one thing which both of us overlooked—or, rather, of which we were in ignorance."
"That you were afraid?" said Gabrielle, rising to her feet, with a world of scorn and anger in her beautiful face.
Vassilitch regarded her with steadiness; he took the word as he would have taken a pistol ball, and again she relented. "Forgive me," she said. "I was hasty; I wronged you."
"Mademoiselle, the Queen can do no wrong." He took the hand she gave him, made as if he would have raised it to his lips, then released it with infinite gentleness. "The one important point that we overlooked," he continued, "is that this man—I wonder if you can guess?"
"No, no. Go on."
"——is that this man loves you, mademoiselle."
"Loves—me?"
"So I discovered. You are his guiding star. To you his life points; round you it revolves. Parted from you by an infinite distance, he is yet bound to you by the strongest of laws, and can no more escape your sway than the earth the pole-star to which it looks, about which it rolls. And knowing this, I could not kill him—just yet."
"Why, what folly is this that you are talking?" exclaimed Gabrielle, a trifle awed in spite of herself. "You are not serious, monsieur? You cannot be."