“Nicette!” he exclaimed, a little troubled by the fixity of her gaze. He saw then that she was gulping, as though trying to speak. “What is it?” he asked, mutinous against the gentler spirit that was possessing him. He had to bend his head to hear her. “While they lived--it was always he--that received--the praise, the tit-bit, the love.” “Who received?” “Baptiste.” He drew himself up with an astonished expression. What answer was to make here--what course pursue with a soul so inadequate? She spoke of her parents, it seemed; was pleading their favouritism in vindication of her crime. It was a confession of moral obliquity so ingenuous as to baffle argument. For the first time a shock of conscious pity for a thing so handicapped in the pursuit of the living principle shook him. He bent down, seized the box of sweetmeat, and flung it into the fire. The girl gave a strange little cry, and gazed up at him, her mouth breathless, her eyes glazed with the floating of sudden tears. “What now?” said Ned. Her voice broke in a quick sob. “I thought there was no hope or forgiveness, that you meant to hate me for evermore.” He turned away. How could he be other than moved and stricken? She had not, after all, so much sought to extenuate her crime as to plead for herself against the hatred she had thought his act was meant to express. There was silence for a time; then he sat down in a chair apart from her, and spoke, gazing into the fire. “How can you think it mine either to hate or to forgive? How--” (he struck his hand to his forehead--turned upon her in utter desperation). “Nicette! do you _ever_ feel remorse for your deed?” “I dare not think of it,” she whispered. Then suddenly she cried out, “I think the people of my dreams are often more real than the living about me. They come and go, sweet or terrible. Was it one of them left Baptiste to die in the tree! Oh, monsieur, monsieur! if I could learn it--that I was not guilty of his death! Or if I could die myself and atone!” She buried her face in her hands. “Now,” thought Ned, “shall I tell her the truth--that, practically, she is not guilty?” “No,” muttered the little Belial voice in his ear; “what value lies in the practical significance? The moral is the truth. Besides, are you so sure that her imagination is not at this moment calculating its probable effects on you? Think of her consummate and enduring art in affecting a character, in playing a part.” The frost of scepticism nipped his pretty burgeon of pity. He hardened his heart and drew back again. “Die!” he said, with a little caustic laugh; “well, for one of your imagination, it should be easy in these days to devise a quite lawful means of introduction to Monsieur Sanson.” She glanced up at him quickly, with a look of agony; then drooped her head and said no more. A second long silence fell between them. But by-and-by Ned found himself restlessly driven to open upon her again.