n."

At that reminder of yesterday she winced, and I was sorry that I had
uttered it, for it must have set the wound in her pride a-bleeding
again. Yesterday I had as much as told her that I loved her, and
yesterday she had as much as answered me that she loved me, for
yesterday I had sworn that Saint-Eustache's story of my betrothal was
a lie. To-day she had had assurance of the truth from the very woman to
whom Lesperon's faith was plighted, and I could imagine something of her
shame.

"Yesterday, monsieur," she answered contemptuously, "you lied in many
things."

"Nay, I spoke the truth in all. Oh, God in heaven, mademoiselle," I
exclaimed in sudden passion, "will you not believe me? Will you not
accept my word for what I say, and have a little patience until I shall
have discharged such obligations as will permit me to explain?"

"Explain?" quoth she, with withering disdain.

"There is a hideous misunderstanding in all this. I am the victim of a
miserable chain of circumstances. Oh, I can say no more! These Marsacs
I shall easily pacify. I am to meet Monsieur de Marsac at Grenade on
the day after to-morrow. In my pocket I have a letter from this living
sword-blade, in which he tells me that he will give himself the pleasure
of killing me then. Yet--"

"I hope he does, monsieur!" she cut in, with a fierceness before which
I fell dumb and left my sentence unfinished. "I shall pray God that he
may!" she added. "You deserve it as no man deserved it yet!"

For a moment I stood stricken, indeed, by her words. Then, my reason
grasping the motive of that fierceness, a sudden joy pervaded me. It was
a fierceness breathing that hatred that is a part of love, than which,
it is true, no hatred can be more deadly. And yet so eloquently did it
tell me of those very feelings which she sought jealously to conceal,
that, moved by a sudden impulse, I stepped close up to her.

"Roxalanne," I said fervently, "you do not hope for it. What would your
life be if I were dead? Child, child, you love me even as I love you."
I caught her suddenly to me with infinite tenderness, with reverence
almost. "Can you lend no ear to the voice of this love? Can you not have
faith in me a little? Can you not think that if I were quite as unworthy
as you make-believe to your very self, this love could have no place?"

"It has no place!" she cried. "You lie--as in all things else. I do not
love you. I hate you. Dieu! How I hate you!"

She had