ands between two
fires--" he said. She looked at him inquiringly, and he added, "the
punishment he deserves and the punishment he does not deserve. But it
is interesting to be thus picked out upon the stone, however harsh the
picture. You said I influenced you--well?"

"Monsieur," she went on, "there were times when, listening to you, I
needed all my strength to resist. I have felt myself weak and shaking
when you came into the room. There was something in you that appealed to
me, I know not what; but I do know that it was not the best of me, that
it was emotional, some strange power of your personality--ah yes, I can
acknowledge all now. You had great cleverness, gifts that startled and
delighted; but yet I felt always, and that feeling grew and grew,
that there was nothing in you wholly honest, that by artifice you had
frittered away what once may have been good in you. Now all goodness in
you was an accident of sense and caprice, not true morality."

"What has true morality to do with love of you?" he said.

"You ask me hard questions," she replied. "This it has to do with it: We
go from morality to higher things, not from higher things to morality.
Pure love is a high thing; yours was not high. To have put my life in
your hands--ah no, no! And so I fought you. There was no question of
yourself and Robert Moray--none. Him I knew to possess fewer gifts,
but I knew him also to be what you could never be. I never measured him
against you. What was his was all of me worth the having, and was given
always; there was no change. What was yours was given only when in your
presence, and then with hatred of myself and you--given to some baleful
fascination in you. For a time, the more I struggled against it the more
it grew, for there was nothing that could influence a woman which you
did not do. Monsieur, if you had had Robert Moray's character and your
own gifts, I could--monsieur, I could have worshiped you!"

Doltaire was in a kind of dream. He was sitting now in the high-backed
chair, his mouth and chin in his hand, his elbow resting on the
chair-arm. His left hand grasped the other arm, and he leaned forward
with brows bent and his eyes fixed on her intently. It was a figure
singularly absorbed, lost in study of some deep theme. Once his sword
clanged against the chair as it slipped a little from its position, and
he started almost violently, though the dull booming of a cannon in no
wise seemed to break the quietness