"Seek not to fright me from vengeance, for I intend none! I did not come to punish. I do not know why it is, but where you are not I cannot rest. I am drawn to you as by some power of magic. I would be with you even in hell! Spy, traitress that you are, I love you! Your dupe that I am, I love you!" I went to where, with downcast eyes, she stood, and I caught her hand and pressed it to my lips. "I make myself a jest, a thing for laughter, do I not, kissing the hand that would slay me?" She raised her eyes, and held out her hand towards the fire-place, saying: "The hand that I would thrust into the flame to save you from the lightest harm!" What? Now that I was here, now that my capture seemed certain, would she pretend that she had not acted for La Chatre against me? She did not know that I had met Pierre, and what he had confessed to me. "Mock me as you will, mademoiselle!" said I. "Mistrust me as _you_ will, monsieur! I tell you, I would not have you undergo the smallest harm!" "You well sustain the jest!" "Before God," she answered, "I do not jest!" There was in her voice a ring of earnestness that seemed impossible to be counterfeit. Puzzled, I looked at her, trying to read her countenance. "Yet," I said, presently, "you were a spy upon me!" "I was, God pity me! Scourge me with rough words as you will; I merit every blow!" "And you came here to see La Chatre," I went on, "perhaps because you feared discovery, perhaps because you thought your work of betrayal was done" (for I thought that she may have known of the midnight march of the governor's troops), "perhaps to finish that work!" "Now you wrong me at last!" she cried. "Thank God, I am not as bad as you can think me!" "Then you did not come here to see La Chatre?" "I came to see him, I admit! I was seeking him when I met you here. But it was not because I feared discovery that I left you, nor because I thought my miserable work was done, nor to finish it." I saw now that she was in great agitation. She tottered forward to the table and put her hand on it, and leaned on it for support. It seemed as if she were speaking the truth, as if there might be some explanation of all, but that her inward excitement was too great, her ideas too confused, for her to assemble the facts and present them in proper order. It seemed that she could answer my accusations only as they came, that she acknowledged herself guilty in part towards me, and yet did not wish me harm. "Mademoiselle," I said, dropping my harshness and irony, "to believe you true would make me as happy as I now am wretched. But why is your boy here, in the governor's service? Why did he carry from you the secret of my hiding-place?" Mademoiselle shuddered and gave a gesture of despair, as if there were indeed no defence for her. "Why are the troops away, if not in quest of me?" I asked. "We saw them going towards Maury by the river road."