“Ah!”—it was a true lover’s cry of joy—“a lie, Denise!”
“Yes, a lie. I say so to you because I have said it to them. André, will you for your own sake—I cannot and will not ask for mine—will you not refuse now and henceforth to be the servant and ally of Madame de Pompadour? Will you not help me instead in the cause which is the cause of your nobility and mine—of honesty and honour?”
“I could wish,” he answered earnestly, “for your sake, Denise, that you would refuse to have any part in this squalid struggle for power. Believe me, it is no task for a woman such as we—I—would have you be.”
“Do not I know it?” she answered wearily. “To the woman I would be it is hateful. It soils—it soils,” she cried in a low voice of anguish. “But take my place, André, and I promise you I will leave Versailles for Beau Séjour till”—she looked up timidly, unable to check the tender radiance in her appealing eyes—“till you come to tell me you are victorious and she has gone for ever.”
André had taken her outstretched hands. Her words were like wine to a fainting man. Denise loved him—Denise loved him! Last night with another woman’s hands on his shoulders, a woman promising him love, success, glory, the great secret whose fascination was so irresistible, he had refused to succumb to temptation, and Denise’s look even more than her words was now his reward. He had only to promise and she would be in his arms for ever. And so for a few blissful moments of oblivion to the perils that beset them both he stood with her dear hands in his, her face close to his, supremely happy, as she was.
Suddenly they both stepped back. Some one had stealthily entered—only a lackey peeping cautiously, but a lackey, they both recognised at once, of Madame de Pompadour.
“Whom do you seek?” Denise demanded haughtily.
The man had obviously expected to find André alone. He now tried to sidle away.
“If,” said the Marquise de Beau Séjour, “you have a message for Monsieur le Vicomte de Nérac, give it to him.”
The man, thus sternly commanded, reluctantly handed André a small note and fled.