Duty led men by strange ways in those strange days. Only of one thing could a man take heed—that he should be faithful to his ideals, and constant in the path which he had chosen, even though across it lay the shadows of disillusion and bitterness darkening to the final abyss. There could be no turning back. The dark girl flushed and bit an angrily twitching lip as she stared after Dangeau’s retreating figure. When Hébert joined her, she turned her shoulder on him, and threw him a black look. "Why did you leave me?" she cried hotly. "Am I to stand here alone, for any beast to insult?" "Poor, fluttered dove," said Hébert, sneering. He slid an easy arm about her waist. "Come then, Thérèse, no sulks. Look over and watch that fool Girondin yonder. He ’s dying, they say, but must needs be carried here to vote for mercy." As he spoke he drew her forward, and still with a dark glow upon her cheeks she yielded. CHAPTER XII SEPARATION Rosalie Leboeuf sat behind her counter knitting. Even on this cold January day the exertion seemed to heat her. She paused at intervals, and waved the huge, half-completed stocking before her face, to produce a current of air. Swinging her legs from the counter, and munching an apple noisily, was a handsome, heavy-browed young woman, whose fine high colour and bold black eyes were sufficiently well known and admired amongst a certain set. An atmosphere of vigour and perfect health appeared to surround her, and she had that pose and air which come from superb vitality and complete self-satisfaction. If the strait-laced drew their skirts aside and stuck virtuous noses in the air when Thérèse Marcel was mentioned, it was very little that that young woman cared. She and Rosalie were first cousins, and the respectable widow Leboeuf winked at Thérèse’s escapades, in consideration of the excellent and spicy gossip which she could often retail. Rosalie was nothing if not curious; and just now there was a very savoury subject to hand, for Paris had seen her King strip to the headsman, and his blood flow in the midst of his capital town. "You should have been there, ma cousine," said Thérèse between two bites of her apple. "I?" said Rosalie in her thick, drawling way. "I am no longer young enough, nor slim enough, to push and struggle for a place. But tell me then, Thérèse, was he pale?" Thérèse threw away the apple core, and showed all her splendid teeth in a curious feline mixture of laugh and yawn. "Well, so-so," she said lazily; "but he was calm enough. I have heard it said that he was all of a sweat and a tremble on the tenth of August, but he did n’t show it yesterday. I was well in front,—Heaven be praised, I have good friends,—and his face did not even twitch when he saw the steel. He looked at it for a moment or two,—one would have said he was curious,—and then he began to speak."