"
"Look in my face, Roxalanne. Can you see nothing there of how I am
torturing myself?"
"Then tell me, monsieur," she begged, her voice a very caress of
suppliant softness, - "tell me what vexes you and sets a curb upon
your tongue. You exaggerate, I am assured. You could do nothing
dishonourable, nothing vile."
"Child," I cried, "I thank God that you are right! I cannot do
what is dishonourable, and I will not, for all that a month ago
I pledged myself to do it!"
A sudden horror, a doubt, a suspicion flashed into her glance.
"You - you do not mean that you are a spy?" she asked; and from my
heart a prayer of thanks went up to Heaven that this at least it
was mine frankly to deny.
"No, no - not that. I am no spy."
Her face cleared again, and she sighed.
"It is, I think, the only thing I could not forgive. Since it is
not that, will you not tell me what it is?"
For a moment the temptation to confess, to tell her everything, was
again upon me. But the futility of it appalled me.
"Don't ask me," I besought her; "you will learn it soon enough."
For I was confident that once my wager was paid, the news of it and
of the ruin of Bardelys would spread across the face of France like
a ripple over water. Presently--
"Forgive me for having come into your life, Roxalanne!" I implored
her, and then I sighed again. "Helas! Had I but known you earlier!
I did not dream such women lived in this worn-out France."
"I will not pry, monsieur, since your resolve appears to be so firm.
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