She seemed alarmed by my violence, retreating a step or two, and looking at me haughtily, yet with a kind of shame-facedness. ‘Believe me, it means nothing,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I beg you to understand that, sir. It was a foolish jest.’ ‘A jest?’ I said. ‘It fell from this window.’ ‘It was a jest, sir,’ she answered stubbornly. But I could see that, with all her pride, she was alarmed; her face was troubled, and there were tears in her eyes. And this rendered me under the circumstances only the more persistent. ‘I have the velvet here, madame,’ I said. ‘You must tell me more about it.’ She looked at me with a weightier impulse of anger than she had yet exhibited. ‘I do not think you know to whom you are speaking,’ she said, breathing fast. ‘Leave the room, sir, and at once! I have told you it was a jest. If you are a gentleman you will believe me, and go.’ And she pointed to the door. But I held my ground, with an obstinate determination to pierce the mystery. ‘I am a gentleman, madame,’ I said, ‘and yet I must know more. Until I know more I cannot go.’ ‘Oh, this is insufferable!’ she cried, looking round as if for a way of escape; but I was between her and the only door. ‘This is unbearable! The knot was never intended for you, sir. And what is more, if M. de Bruhl comes and finds you here, you will repent it bitterly.’ I saw that she was at least as much concerned on her own account as on mine, and thought myself justified under the circumstances in taking advantage of her fears. I deliberately laid my cap on the table which stood beside me. ‘I will go madame,’ I said, looking at her fixedly, ‘when I know all that you know about this knot I hold, and not before. If you are unwilling to tell me, I must wait for M. de Bruhl, and ask him.’ She cried out ‘Insolent!’ and looked at me as if in her rage and dismay she would gladly have killed me; being, I could see, a passionate woman. But I held my ground, and after a moment she spoke. ‘What do you want to know?’ she said, frowning darkly. ‘This knot--how did it come to lie in the street below your window? I want to know that first.’ ‘I dropped it,’ she answered sullenly. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Because--’ And then she stopped and looked at me, and then again looked down, her face crimson. ‘Because, if you must know,’ she continued hurriedly, tracing a pattern on the table with her finger, ‘I saw it bore the words “A MOI.” I have been married only two months, and I thought my husband might find it--and bring it to me. It was a silly fancy.’ ‘But where did you get it?’ I asked, and I stared at her in growing wonder and perplexity. For the more questions I put, the further, it seemed to me, I strayed from my object. ‘I picked it up in the Ruelle d’Arcy,’ she answered, tapping her foot on the floor resentfully. ‘It was the silly thing put it into my head to--to do what I did. And now, have you any more questions, sir?’