an were plain.

He discerned them, and while he hungered for a more explicit denial, for
a cry of indignant protest, for a passionate repudiation, he found some
comfort in that look. And his heart spoke. "I do not believe it!" he
cried impetuously, in perfect forgetfulness of the fact that he had not
put his charge into words. "I do not--I will not! Only say that it is
false! And I will say no more."

Her answer was as cold water thrown upon him. "I will tell you nothing,"
she answered.

"Why not? Why not?" he cried.

"You ask why not," she answered slowly. "Are you so short of memory? Is
it so long since, against my will and prayers, you came into yonder
house--that you forget what I said and what I did? And what you
promised?"

"My God!" he cried in excitement. "You do not know where you stand! You
do not know what perils threaten you. This is no time," he continued,
holding out his hands to her in growing agitation, "for sticking on
scruples or raising trifles. Tell me all!"

"I will tell you nothing!" she replied with the same quiet firmness. "I
have suffered. I suffer. Can you not suffer a little?"

"Not blasphemy!" he said. "Not that! Tell me"--his voice, his face grew
suppliant--"tell me only that it was not your voice, Anne. Tell me that
it was not you who spoke! Tell me--but that."

"I will tell you nothing!" she answered in the same tone.

"You do not know----"

"I know what it is you have in your mind!" she replied. "What it is you
are thinking of me. That they will burn me in the Bourg du Four
presently, as they burned the girl in Aix last year! As they burned the
woman in Besancon not many months since; I have seen those who saw it.
As they did to two women in Zurich--my mother was there! As they did to
five hundred people in Geneva in my grandfather's time. It is that," she
continued, a strange wild light in her eyes, "that you think they will
do to me?"

"God forbid!" he cried.

"Nay, you may do it, too, if you choose," she answered, gravely
regarding him. "But I do not think you will, for you are young, almost
as young as I am, and, having done it, you would have many years to live
and think. You would remember in those years that it was my mother who
nursed your father, that it was you who came to us not we to you, that
it was you who promised to aid us, not I who sought your aid! You would
remember all these things of a morning when you awoke early: and
this--that in the end you gave me