"I beg your pardon if I am insulting; and I have no desire to be amusing," and then Laballière lost his head. "You are at liberty to walk the streets with whom you please, of course," he blurted, with ill-suppressed passion, "but if I encounter Mr. Hector Santien in your company again, in public, I shall wring his neck, then and there, as I would a chicken; I shall break every bone in his body"--Suzanne had arisen. "You have said enough, sir. I even desire no explanation of yo' words." "I did n't intend to explain them," he retorted, stung by the insinuation. "You will escuse me further," she requested icily, motioning to retire. "Not till--oh, not till you have forgiven me," he cried impulsively, barring her exit; for repentance had come swiftly this time. But she did not forgive him. "I can wait," she said. Then he stepped aside and she passed by him without a second glance. She sent word to Hector the following day to come to her. And when he was there, in the late afternoon, they walked together to the end of the vine-sheltered gallery,--where the air was redolent with the odor of spring blossoms. "Hector," she began, after a while, "some one has told me I should not be seen upon the streets of New Orleans with you." He was trimming a long rose-stem with his sharp penknife. He did not stop nor start, nor look embarrassed, nor anything of the sort. "Indeed!" he said. "But, you know," she went on, "if the saints came down from heaven to tell me there was a reason for it, I could n't believe them." "You wouldn't believe them, _ma petite Suzanne_?" He was getting all the thorns off nicely, and stripping away the heavy lower leaves. "I want you to look me in the face, Hector, and tell me if there is any reason." He snapped the knife-blade and replaced the knife in his pocket; then he looked in her eyes, so unflinchingly, that she hoped and believed it presaged a confession of innocence that she would gladly have accepted. But he said indifferently: "Yes, there are reasons." "Then I say there are not," she exclaimed excitedly; "you are amusing your-self--laughing at me, as you always do. There are no reasons that I will hear or believe. You will walk the streets with me, will you not, Hector?" she entreated, "and go to church with me on Sunday; and, and--oh, it's nonsense, nonsense for you to say things like that!" He held the rose by its long, hardy stem, and swept it lightly and caressingly across her forehead, along her cheek, and over her pretty mouth and chin, as a lover might have done with his lips. He noticed how the red rose left a crimson stain behind it. She had been standing, but now she sank upon the bench that was there, and buried her face in her palms. A slight convulsive movement of the muscles indicated a suppressed sob.