a voluntary act, this disclosure, it had been
always I who unmasked myself and she who listened--alone; and in this
voluntariness and this privacy there had been something which took from
the shame of anticipation. But here--here was no voluntary act on
my part, no privacy, nothing but shame. And I stood mute, convicted,
speechless, under her eyes--like the thing I was.

Yet if anything could have braced me it was Mademoiselle's voice when
she answered him.

'Go on, Monsieur,' she said calmly, 'you will have done the sooner.'

'You do not believe me?' he replied. 'Then, I say, look at him! Look at
him! If ever shame--'

'Monsieur,' she said abruptly--she did not look at me, 'I am ashamed of
myself.'

'But you don't hear me,' the Lieutenant rejoined hotly. 'His very name
is not his own! He is not Barthe at all. He is Berault, the gambler, the
duellist, the bully; whom if you--'

Again she interrupted him.

'I know it,' she said coldly. 'I know it all; and if you have nothing
more to tell me, go, Monsieur. Go!' she continued in a tone of infinite
scorn. 'Be satisfied, that you have earned my contempt as well as my
abhorrence.'

He looked for a moment taken aback. Then,--

'Ay, but I have more,' he cried, his voice stubbornly triumphant.

'I forgot that you would think little of that. I forgot that a swordsman
has always the ladies' hearts---but I have more. Do you know, too, that
he is in the Cardinal's pay? Do you know that he is here on the same
errand which brings us here--to arrest M. de Cocheforet? Do you know
that while we go about the business openly and in soldier fashion, it
is his part to worm himself into your confidence, to sneak into Madame's
intimacy, to listen at your door, to follow your footsteps, to hang on
your lips, to track you--track you until you betray yourselves and the
man? Do you know this, and that all his sympathy is a lie,
Mademoiselle? His help, so much bait to catch the secret? His aim
blood-money--blood-money? Why, MORBLEU!' the Lieutenant continued,
pointing his finger at me, and so carried away by passion, so lifted
out of himself by wrath and indignation, that I shrank before him--'you
talk, lady, of contempt and abhorrence in the same breath with me, but
what have you for him--what have you for him--the spy, the informer, the
hired traitor? And if you doubt me, if you want evidence, look at him.
Only look at him, I say.'

And he might say it; for I stood silent still, cow