her voice cut me as if they had been knives. 'Nothing? Do you think,
Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose my self-respect, as I do with
every word I speak to you? Do you think it costs me nothing to be here
when I feel every look you cast upon me an insult, every breath I take
in your presence a contamination? Nothing, Monsieur?' she continued with
bitter irony. 'Nay, something! But something which I could not hope to
make clear to you.'

I sat for a moment confounded, quivering with pain. It had been one
thing to feel that she hated and scorned me, to know that the trust
and confidence which she had begun to place in me were transformed
to loathing. It was another to listen to her hard, pitiless words, to
change colour under the lash of her gibing tongue. For a moment I could
not find voice to answer her. Then I pointed to M. de Cocheforet.

'Do you love him?' I said hoarsely, roughly. The gibing tone had passed
from her voice to mine.

She did not answer.

'Because if you do you will let me tell my tale. Say no, but once more,
Mademoiselle--I am only human--and I go. And you will repent it all your
life.'

I had done better had I taken that tone from the beginning. She winced,
her head dropped, she seemed to grow smaller. All in a moment, as it
were, her pride collapsed.

'I will hear you,' she murmured.

'Then we will ride on, if you please,' I said keeping the advantage I
had gained. 'You need not fear. Your brother will follow.'

I caught hold of her rein and turned her horse, and she suffered it
without demur; and in a moment we were pacing side by side, with the
long straight road before us. At the end where it topped the hill, I
could see the finger-post, two faint black lines against the sky. When
we reached that--involuntarily I checked my horse and made it move more
slowly.

'Well, sir?' she said impatiently. And her figure shook as with cold.

'It is a tale I desire to tell you, Mademoiselle,' I answered. 'Perhaps
I may seem to begin a long way off, but before I end I promise to
interest you. Two months ago there was living in Paris a man--perhaps a
bad man--at any rate, by common report a hard man; a man with a peculiar
reputation.'

She turned on me suddenly, her eyes gleaming through her mask.

'Oh, Monsieur, spare me this!' she said, quietly scornful. 'I will take
it for granted.'

'Very well,' I replied steadfastly. 'Good or bad, he one day, in
defiance of the Cardinal's edict against