“No, Denise,” he said softly. “I shall not trouble you now or soon, but—” he had caught her hand—“you shall yet be mine, I swear it. You think you do not love me, but you shall be convinced—you shall.”
He kissed her fingers with a tender reverence. “Adieu, Marquise! I go to my duty and revenge,” he said, and he left her there under the spell of his mastery, with her boar-hound at her feet, and the flames of fire pointing to the motto “Dieu Le Vengeur!”
CHAPTER V
THE PRESUMPTION OF A BEARDLESS CHEVALIER
André rode at a walking pace down the slope to the village, for he wanted to think. He had always prided himself on his knowledge of women; he had imagined he knew Denise as well as himself. She was of his class, lovely, high-spirited, proud, patriotic, and best of all a true woman. Hence it was a sore and surprising blow to his pride to discover that she should reject his love because he had lived the life of his and her class. He had gone to the château to confess everything, to swear that from this day onwards no other woman, be she beautiful as the dawn, as enchanting as Circe, could ever occupy five minutes of his thoughts. And he meant it. Those others, the shattered idols of a vanished past, had simply satisfied vanity, ambition, a physical craving. But Denise he really loved. She inspired a devotion, a passion which gripped and satisfied body, soul, and spirit; she was that without which life seemed unmeaning, empty, poor, despicable. But why could not she see this—the difference between a fleeting desire and the sincere homage of manhood to an ideal, between the gallant and the lover? What more had a wife a right to expect than the love of a husband, brave, loyal, faithful? It was unreasonable, for men were men and women were women. Yet here was a woman who did.
But he would—must—win her. That was the adamantine resolution in his breast, all the stronger because she had scorned and defied him. Yet he would win her in his way, not hers. Yes, he would conquer her against herself. For him life now meant simply Denise—the heart and the soul and the spirit of Denise—the conquest of a woman’s will. The hot pulses of health and strength, of manhood, his noble blood and ambition throbbed responsive to the resolution. He thanked God that he was young and a soldier, that there was war and a prize to be won. Yet he also felt that this love meant something new, that it had transformed him into something that he had never dreamed of as possible. And victory would complete the change. So as he rode the fierce thoughts tumbled over each other in a foam of passion, in the sublime intoxication of a vision of a new heaven and a new earth—from which he was rudely awakened.
He had halted for the moment at the door of the village inn. In the dingy parlour sat the Chevalier, one leg thrown over the table, a beaker in his hand resting on his thigh, while his other hand was stroking the chin of the waiting wench, a strapping, tawdry slut.
André kicked the door open. “Am I disturbing you?” he said, pitching his hat off as if the parlour were his own.
“Not in the least,” the Chevalier replied without stirring, though the girl began to giggle with an affectation of alarmed modesty. “My wine is just done”; he drained off the glass. “I will leave Toinette to you, Vicomte, for,” he put on his hat, “it is time I returned to the château.”
This studied insolence was exactly what André required. “I thank you,” he said, freezingly, “but before I take your place, you and I, Monsieur le Chevalier, will have a word first.”
“As you please, my dear Vicomte,” said the young man, swinging comfortably on to the table and peering at him from under his saucy plumes. “You will have much to say, I doubt not, for you must have said so little at the château. Run away, my child,” he added to the wench, who was now staring at them both with genuine alarm in her coarse eyes, “run away.”