The girl looked at him with wide eyes, quite fearless, much astonished, as a brave maid might look at some wild beast of the woods that came in her way. But the purport of his words seemed to please her, for she answered him quickly and readily. "Well, I have come to you to put your protestations to the proof. If you meant every word you said, every syllable, every letter, you can serve me well. If not, good-night and good-bye." And with these words she moved a little as if she were ready to say farewell to him then and there. Villon put forward an appealing hand that stayed her. "I wrote with my heart's blood," he protested, and even a green girl could not fail to read the truth in his voice. Now she came close to him, speaking very low but very distinctly. "Listen. I am one of the Queen's ladies; Thibaut d'Aussigny, the Grand Constable of France, loves me a little and my broad lands much. He wills that I should marry him. He tried to force me to his will, to shame me to his pleasure, and so I hate him, and so should you, for it was he who gave you your beating." Villon, who had been listening to her in wonder, started as if he had been struck anew. "Oh, it was he?" he interrupted. The girl came a little closer, became a little more confidential. "He gave your rhymes to me and told me how you had been treated. When I read them I said--here, if a poet speaks truth, is the one man in France who can help me." Villon drew himself back with a little shiver of intelligence. The lumes of wine, the fumes of wonder were drifting away from him, leaving him face to face with naked, amazing reality. "Why not your yellow-haired, pink-faced lover?" he asked. Katherine frowned disdain. "Noel le Jolys is a man many women might love, but I love no man; I only hate Thibaut d'Aussigny. Do you understand?" "I begin to understand," Villon answered, sadly. The girl came nearer to Villon. Her face was very pale in the dim light, and a fleeting image of the moon in clouds teased his fancy. Her lips were as red, he thought, as the ruby of a bishop's ring, and her eyes out-starred Venus. So it was he who trembled and not the maiden who was saying strange unmaiden-like words in a clear, steel-like whisper. "Kill Thibaut d'Aussigny. You are a skillful swordsman, they say. You are little better than an outlaw. You say you love me more than life. Kill Thibaut d'Aussigny!" Villon looked at her queerly. To save his life he could not keep his face from quivering. He was eating his heart and it tasted very bitter, and his own voice sounded far away to him, like a voice heard in a dream. "So that you and Noel what's his name may live happily ever after?" Katherine drew back from him, a little scorn in her eyes and on her lips. "Are you less eager to serve me than you were?" The question struck him in the breast like the stroke of a sword. He remembered his golden vows and his golden verses, and sickened at his shadow of disloyal doubt and anger.