'I will hear no more,' she answered in a voice she vainly strove to render steady. 'To what end? Can I say more than I have said? Or did you think that I could forgive you now--with him behind us going to his death? Oh, no, no!' she continued.
'Leave me! I implore you to leave me, sir. I am not well.'
She drooped over her horse's neck as she spoke, and began to weep so passionately that the tears ran down her cheeks under her mask, and fell and sparkled like dew on the mane; while her sobs shook her so that I thought she must fall. I stretched out my hand instinctively to give her help, but she shrank from me.
'No!' she gasped, between her sobs. 'Do not touch me. There is too much between us.'
'Yet there must be one thing more between us,' I answered firmly.
'You must listen to me a little longer whether you will or no, Mademoiselle: for the love you bear to your brother. There is one course still open to me by which I may redeem my honour; and it has been in my mind for some time back to take that course.
'To-day, I am thankful to say, I can take it cheerfully, if not without regret; with a steadfast heart, if no light one.
Mademoiselle,' I continued earnestly, feeling none of the triumph, none of the vanity, none of the elation I had foreseen, but only simple joy in the joy I could give her, 'I thank God that it IS still in my power to undo what I have done: that it is still in my power to go back to him who sent me, and telling him that I have changed my mind, and will bear my own burdens, to pay the penalty.'
We were within a hundred paces of the top and the finger-post.
She cried out wildly that she did not understand. 'What is it you--you--have just said?' she murmured. 'I cannot hear.' And she began to fumble with the ribbon of her mask.
'Only this, Mademoiselle,' I answered gently. 'I give your brother back his word, his parole. From this moment he is free to go whither he pleases. Here, where we stand, four roads meet.
That to the right goes to Montauban, where you have doubtless friends, and can lie hid for a time. Or that to the left leads to Bordeaux, where you can take ship if you please. And in a word, Mademoiselle,' I continued, ending a little feebly, 'I hope that your troubles are now over.'
She turned her face to me--we had both come to a standstill--and plucked at the fastenings of her mask. But her trembling fingers had knotted the string, and in a moment she dropped her hand with a cry of despair. 'But you? You?' she wailed in a voice so changed that I should not have known it for hers. 'What will you do? I do not understand, Monsieur.'
'There is a third road,' I answered. 'It leads to Paris. That is my road, Mademoiselle. We part here.'
'But why?' she cried wildly.
'Because from to-day I would fain begin to be honourable,' I answered in a low voice. 'Because I dare not be generous at another's cost. I must go back whence I came.'
'To the Chatelet?' she muttered.
'Yes, Mademoiselle, to the Chatelet.'
She tried feverishly to raise her mask with her hand.
'I am not well,' she stammered. 'I cannot breathe.'
And she began to sway so violently in her saddle that I sprang down, and, running round her horse's head, was just in time to catch her as she fell. She was not quite unconscious then, for as I supported her, she cried out,--'Do not touch me! Do not touch me! You kill me with shame!'
But as she spoke she clung to me; and I made no mistake. Those words made me happy. I carried her to the bank, my heart on fire, and laid her against it just as M. de Cocheforet rode up.
He sprang from his horse, his eyes blazing, 'What is this?' he cried. 'What have you been saying to her, man?'
'She will tell you,' I answered drily, my composure returning under his eye. 'Amongst other things, that you are free. From this moment, M. de Cocheforet, I give you back your parole, and I take my own honour. Farewell.'
He cried out something as I mounted, but I did not stay to heed or answer. I dashed the spurs into my horse, and rode away past the cross-roads, past the finger-post; away with the level upland stretching before me, dry, bare, almost treeless; and behind me, all I loved. Once, when I had gone a hundred yards, I looked back and saw him standing upright against the sky, staring after me across her body. And again a minute later I looked back.
This time saw only the slender wooden cross, and below it a dark blurred mass.
