Mademoiselle felt the angry tears come sharply to her eyes. Why should this man move her thus? What, after all, did his opinions matter to her? She chid her own imprudence in having lent herself to this unseemly argument. She had already trusted him too much. A little tremour crept over her heart—she remembered the September madness, the horror, and the blood,—and the colour ebbed slowly from her cheeks as she bent forward and took her pen again. Dangeau saw her whiten, and in an instant his mood changed. Her hand shook, and he guessed the cause. He had frightened her; she did not trust him. The thought stabbed very deep, but he too fell silent, and resumed his work, though with a heavy heart. When she rose to go, he looked up, hesitated a moment, and then said: "Citoyenne." "Yes, Citizen." "Citoyenne, it would be wiser not to express to others the sentiments you have avowed to-night. They are not safe—for Marie Roche." "No, Citizen." Mademoiselle’s back was towards him, and he had no means of discovering how she took his warning. "That process of purging, of which I spoke, goes forward apace," he continued slowly; "those who have sinned against the people must expiate their sins, it may be in blood." "Yes, Citizen." Something drove him on—that subtle instinct which drives us all at times, the desire to probe deeply, to try to the uttermost. "They and their innocent children, perhaps," he said gloomily, and her own case was in his mind. "What do your priests say—is it not ’to the third and fourth generation’?" She turned and faced him then, very pale, but quite composed. There was no coward blood in her. "You are trying to tell me that you will denounce me," she said quietly. The words fell like a thunderbolt. All the blood in Dangeau’s body seemed to rush violently to his head, and for a moment he lost himself. He was by her side, his hands catching at her shoulders, where they lay heavy, shaking. "Look me in the face and say that again!" he thundered in the voice his section knew. "Ah!" cried Mademoiselle,—"what do you mean, Monsieur? This is an outrage, release me!" His hands fell, but his eyes held hers. They blazed upon her like heated steel, and the anger in them burned her. "Ah! you dare not say it again," he said very low. "Monsieur, I dare." Her gaze met his, and a strange excitement possessed her. She would have been less than woman had she not felt her power—more than woman had she not used it. Dangeau spoke again, his voice muffled with passion. "You dare say I, Jacques Dangeau, am a spy, an informer, a betrayer of trust?" Mademoiselle’s composure began to return. This man shook when he touched her; she was stronger than he. There was no danger. "Not quite that, Citizen," she said quietly. "But I did not know what a patriot might consider his duty."