herese. For me, I can only give them my infinite
compassion. I have too much reverence in me to invoke the name of a God
of whom clever men have robbed me a long time ago. How could I help it?
For the talk was clever and--and I had a mind. And I am also, as Therese
says, naturally sinful. Yes, my dear, I may be naturally wicked but I am
not evil and I could die for you."

"You!" I said. "You are afraid to die."

"Yes. But not for you."

The whole structure of glowing logs fell down, raising a small turmoil of
white ashes and sparks. The tiny crash seemed to wake her up thoroughly.
She turned her head upon the cushion to look at me.

"It's a very extraordinary thing, we two coming together like this," she
said with conviction. "You coming in without knowing I was here and then
telling me that you can't very well go out of the room. That sounds
funny. I wouldn't have been angry if you had said that you wouldn't. It
would have hurt me. But nobody ever paid much attention to my feelings.
Why do you smile like this?"

"At a thought. Without any charlatanism of passion I am able to tell you
of something to match your devotion. I was not afraid for your sake to
come within a hair's breadth of what to all the world would have been a
squalid crime. Note that you and I are persons of honour. And there
might have been a criminal trial at the end of it for me. Perhaps the
scaffold."

"Do you say these horrors to make me tremble?"

"Oh, you needn't tremble. There shall be no crime. I need not risk the
scaffold, since now you are safe. But I entered this room meditating
resolutely on the ways of murder, calculating possibilities and chances
without the slightest compunction. It's all over now. It was all over
directly I saw you here, but it had been so near that I shudder yet."

She must have been very startled because for a time she couldn't speak.
Then in a faint voice:

"For me! For me!" she faltered out twice.

"For you--or for myself? Yet it couldn't have been selfish. What would
it have been to me that you remained in the world? I never expected to
see you again. I even composed a most beautiful letter of farewell.
Such a letter as no woman had ever received."

Instantly she shot out a hand towards me. The edges of the fur cloak
fell apart. A wave of the faintest possible scent floated into my
nostrils.

"Let me have it," she said imperiously.

"You can't have it. It's all in my he