pless nights, he
thought, could not have changed a woman thus--no, nor thrice three; and
he who had seen her last night and saw her now, gazed fascinated and
bewildered, asking himself what had happened, what it meant.

Alas, for answer there rose the spectre which he had been striving to
lay; the spectre that had for the men of that day so appalling, so
shocking a reality. Witchcraft! The word rang in his brain. Witchcraft
would account for this, ay, for all; for her long submission to vile
behests and viler men; for that which he had heard in this house at
midnight; for that which the Syndic had whispered of Basterga; for that
which he noted in her now! Would account for it; ay, but by fixing her
with a guilt, not of this world, terrible, abnormal: by fixing her with
a love of things vile, unspeakable, monstrous, a love that must deprive
her life of all joy, all sweetness, all truth, all purity! A guilt and a
love that showed her thus!

But thus, for a moment only. The next she espied his face above the
landing-edge, perceived that he watched her, detected, perhaps,
something of his feeling. With startling abruptness her features
underwent a change. Her cheeks flamed high, her eyes sparkled with
resentment. "You!" she cried--and her causeless anger, her impatience of
his presence, confirmed the dreadful idea he had conceived. "You!" she
repeated. "How dare you come here? How dare you? What are you doing
here? Your room is below. Go down, sir!"

He did not move, but he met her eyes; he tried to read her soul, his own
quaking. And his look, sombre and stern--for he saw a gulf opening at
his feet--should have given her pause. Instead, her anger faced him down
and mastered him. "Do you hear me?" she flung at him. "Do you hear me?
If you have aught to say, if you are not as those others, go down! Go
down, and I will hear you there!"

He went down then, giving way to her, and she followed him. She closed
the staircase door behind them; and that done, in the living-room with
her he would have spoken. But with a glance at Gentilis' door, she
silenced him, and led the way through the outer door to the open air.
The hour was still early, the sun was barely risen. Save for a sentry
sleeping at his post on the ramparts, there was no one within sight, and
she crossed the open space to the low wall that looked down upon the
Rhone. There, in a spot where the partly stripped branches which shaded
the rampart hid them from the win