e could speak for them. It would not be insurrection--it
would be advocacy. He would give his time, his pen, his speech, his
means, to get them justice--to get them their rights."

She hushed the over-zealous advocate with a sad and bitter smile and
essayed to speak, studied as if for English words, and, suddenly
abandoning that attempt, said, with ill-concealed scorn and in the
Creole patois:

"What is all that? What I want is vengeance!"

"I will finish reading," said Frowenfeld, quickly, not caring to
understand the passionate speech.

"Ah, Palmyre! Palmyre! What you love and hope to love you
because his heart keep itself free, he is loving another!"

_"Qui ci ca, Miche?"_

Frowenfeld was loth to repeat. She had understood, as her face showed;
but she dared not believe. He made it shorter:

"He means that Honore Grandissime loves another woman."

"'Tis a lie!" she exclaimed, a better command of English coming with the
momentary loss of restraint.

The apothecary thought a moment and then decided to speak.

"I do not think so," he quietly said.

"'Ow you know dat?"

She, too, spoke quietly, but under a fearful strain. She had thrown
herself forward, but, as she spoke, forced herself back into her seat.

"He told me so himself."

The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her chair, her
eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She seemed to have lost
all knowledge of place or of human presence. She walked down the
drawing-room quite to its curtained windows and there stopped, her face
turned away and her hand laid with a visible tension on the back of a
chair. She remained so long that Frowenfeld had begun to think of
leaving her so, when she turned and came back. Her form was erect, her
step firm and nerved, her lips set together and her hands dropped easily
at her side; but when she came close up before the apothecary she was
trembling. For a moment she seemed speechless, and then, while her eyes
gleamed with passion, she said, in a cold, clear tone, and in her
native patois:

"Very well: if I cannot love I can have my revenge." She took the letter
from him and bowed her thanks, still adding, in the same tongue, "There
is now no longer anything to prevent."

The apothecary understood the dark speech. She meant that, with no hope
of Honore's love, there was no restraining motive to withhold her from
wreaking what vengeance she could upon Agricola. But he saw the folly