"Shall I come back?" she suggested, smiling. And though he knew that she did not for a moment mean the offer to be accepted, and she had told him that the place, from its memories of the lost André, was hateful to her, he guessed at some lingering traces of regret, even of poignant regret, in her mind. "You could not take up your quarters at Porhoët again, I fear," said he, smiling too. "I wonder if the Citizen Botidoux has got over his interview with the Commissary! Why did you so providentially keep that tricolour sash in your press, Madame? It is true that I have not felt my own man since I had it round me, but it certainly lent a most convincing--perhaps _the_ convincing--touch to the whole affair." "How amazingly you carried it off!" she exclaimed, her eyes glowing. "Oh, I kept the sash because . . . well, one never knew when it would prove useful--to an émigré embarking, for instance. It came off a dead Blue. But, as you can imagine, I could have bitten my tongue out afterwards for having screamed as I did. Yet I--yes, it seemed like a nightmare to recognise your voice. I thought for a moment, you see, that all the time you must have been a Government spy. I could hardly be expected, could I," she inquired, with the glimmer of a smile, "to grasp in a moment such unequalled magnanimity?" "Madame," said La Vireville hardily, "I am getting somewhat tired of that word. You know, to be quite frank, I have not so much claim to it as you might think. In the first place, I rather admired you for . . . for that business with my hunting-knife--save that if you really want to stab a man you must not hesitate like that about it, and you must know just where to strike (I can show you if you wish); and secondly----" "Monsieur," said his Jael, looking down and biting her lip, with a heightened colour, "either you are laughing at me, or you are trying to avenge yourself. I think it is true . . . you are not so magnanimous after all." "Just as I told you!" cried Fortuné. "But I swear that I am not laughing at you. It is the truth, as I live, that when I knew the provocation you had received I thought not less of you, but more, for trying to rid yourself of me--I mean of my cousin Gaspard. But--there is one thing I am dying to know, though I do not feel certain that you can tell me." She looked warily at his half-mocking expression. "I suppose, Monsieur Augustin, that you have earned the right to any information I can give you." La Vireville lazily put his clasped hands behind his head and kept his eyes on her. "Would you really have inserted that knife into me if I had not . . . waked?" Mme. de Guéfontaine parried. "I will tell you," she said, no more than a little perturbed, "if you will tell me something. At what moment exactly _did_ you wake?" He held her a second or two under his amused gaze before he would answer. "That, Madame," he said at length, "is too vital a secret to be revealed. I cannot tell you."