dows, she turned to him. "Now," she
said--there was a smouldering fire in her eyes--"if you have aught to
say to me, say it. Say it now!"

He hesitated. He had had time to think, and he found the burden laid
upon him heavy. "I do not know," he answered, "that I have any right to
speak to you."

"Right!" she cried; and let her bitterness have way in that word.
"Right! Does any stay for that where I am concerned? Or ask my leave, or
crave my will, sir? Right? You have the same right to flout and jeer and
scorn me, the same right to watch and play the spy on me, to hearken at
my door, and follow me, that they have! Ay, and the same right to bid me
come and go, and answer at your will, that others have! Do you scruple a
little at beginning?" she continued mockingly. "It will wear off. It
will come easy by-and-by! For you are like the others!"

"No!"

"You are as the others! You begin as they began!" she repeated, giving
the reins to her indignation. "The day you came, last night even, I
thought you different. I deemed you"--she pressed her hand to her bosom
as if she stilled a pain--"other than you are! I confess it. But you are
their fellow. You begin as they began, by listening on stairs and at
doors, by dogging me and playing eavesdropper, by hearkening to what I
say and do. Right?" she repeated the word bitterly, mockingly, with
fierce unhappiness. "You have the right that they have! The same right!"

"Have I?" he asked slowly. His face was sombre and strangely old.

"Yes!"

"Then how did I gain it?" he retorted with a dark look. "How"--his tone
was as gloomy as his face--"did they gain it? Or--he?"

"He?" The flame was gone from her face. She trembled a little.

"Yes, he--Basterga," he replied, his eyes losing no whit of the change
in her. "How did he gain the right which he has handed on to others, the
right to shame you, to lay hand on you, to treat you as he does? This is
a free city. Women are no slaves here. What then is the secret between
you and him?" Claude continued grimly. "What is your secret?"

"My secret!" Her passion dwindled under his eyes, under his words.

"Ay," Claude answered, "and his! His secret and yours. What is the thing
between you and him?" he continued, his eyes fixed on her, "so dark, so
weighty, so dangerous, you must needs for it suffer his touch, bear his
look, be smooth to him though you loathe him? What is it?"

"Perhaps--love," she muttered, with a forced smile. But it did