le hesitation, he gave it,
whereupon she held it fast, in a way to indicate that there was
something to be said which he must stay and hear.

She looked up into his face. She may have been merely framing in her
mind the word or two of English she was about to utter; but an
excitement shone through her eyes and reddened her lips, and something
sent out from her countenance a look of wild distress.

"You goin' tell 'im?" she asked.

"Who? Agricola?"

"_Non_!"

He spoke the next name more softly.

"Honore?"

Her eyes looked deeply into his for a moment, then dropped, and she made
a sign of assent.

He was about to say that Honore knew already, but saw no necessity for
doing so, and changed his answer.

"I will never tell any one."

"You know?" she asked, lifting her eyes for an instant. She meant to ask
if he knew the motive that had prompted her murderous intent.

"I know your whole sad history."

She looked at him for a moment, fixedly; then, still holding his hand
with one of hers, she threw the other to her face and turned away her
head. He thought she moaned.

Thus she remained for a few moments, then suddenly she turned, clasped
both hands about his, her face flamed up and she opened her lips to
speak, but speech failed. An expression of pain and supplication came
upon her countenance, and the cry burst from her:

"Meg 'im to love me!"

He tried to withdraw his hand, but she held it fast, and, looking up
imploringly with her wide, electric eyes, cried:

"_Vous pouvez le faire, vous pouvez le faire_ (You can do it, you can do
it); _vous etes sorcier, mo conne bien vous etes sorcier_ (you are a
sorcerer, I know)."

However harmless or healthful Joseph's touch might be to the philosophe,
he felt now that hers, to him, was poisonous. He dared encounter her
eyes, her touch, her voice, no longer. The better man in him was
suffocating. He scarce had power left to liberate his right hand with
his left, to seize his hat and go.

Instantly she rose from her chair, threw herself on her knees in his
path, and found command of his language sufficient to cry as she lifted
her arms, bared of their drapery:

"Oh, my God! don' rif-used me--don' rif-used me!"

There was no time to know whether Frowenfeld wavered or not. The thought
flashed into his mind that in all probability all the care and skill he
had spent upon the wound was being brought to naught in this moment of
wild posturing and excitement; but