"You think I owe it to you, sir?"
"Does woman ever owe anything to man that she does not pay a thousand-fold? I count no woman my debtor!" He said it in a tone of tenderness she had not heard before from this soldier of fortune.
"Trust me then in turn! I tell you nothing! Believe me, there are things I dare not tell my confessor that I could tell you; only it is better not."
"Let it be so, madame! 'Trust me all in all or not at all' is a proverb of my country."
They had reached the further end of the street called Fischersand and turned on to the Long Bridge, from which it was but the length of a small side street to the Prediger Strasse.
They halted on the bridge and looked over the balustrade, up the waterway. There was candlelight here and there in the back windows of the houses that abutted on the water. Their gaze could only penetrate a little way along the dark space between the houses. A few stars reflected themselves in the water at their feet. The Lady Ottilie of Thüringen was in a restless mood, in that mood when a woman wants everything and nothing, when she is eager to reveal and careful to hide everything but her eagerness. To an older man perhaps there would have been no puzzle, but to Nigel Charteris, who had never known the spell of woman, she was a mysterious child following her own phantasies.
She gazed into the dark vista for a full minute or so of silence—a silence only broken by the tramp of the guard going its rounds. Then she said—
"Have you ever known what love is?"
Nigel started at the question, for he was conscious of the exaltation of spirit that he felt at being alone with this mysterious child, who was a woman who had proud eyes, that he felt at being her protector in this old garrisoned city that was strange to both of them.
"No, lady!" He spoke truth, and she knew it.