"No!" she said, beginning to tremble under a weight of emotion too heavy for her, following as it did the excitement of the night. "No!" she continued, raising her eyes which had fallen before the ardour of his gaze. "But there must be something you wish to ask me. You must wish to know----" "I have heard what I wished to know." "But----" "Tell me what you please." She stood in thought an instant: then, with a sigh, "He came to me last evening," she said, "when you were at his house." "Messer Blondel?" "Yes. He wished me to procure for him a certain drug that Messer Basterga kept in his room." Claude stared. "In a steel casket chained to the wall?" he asked. "Yes," she whispered with some surprise. "You knew of it, then? He had tried to procure it through Louis, and on the pretence that the box contained papers needed by the State. Failing in that he came last evening to me, and told me the truth." "The truth?" Claude asked, wondering. "But was it the truth?" "It was." Her eyes, like stars on a rainy night, shone softly. "I have proved it." Again, with a ring of exultation in her voice, "I have proved it!" she cried. "How?" "There was in the box a drug, he told me, possessed of an almost miraculous power over disease of body and mind; so rare and so wonderful that none could buy it, and he knew of but this one dose, of which Messer Basterga had possessed himself. He begged me to take it and to give it to him. He had on him, he said, a fatal illness, and if he did not get this--he must die." Her voice shook. "He must die! Now God help him!" "You took it." "I took it." Her face, as her eyes dropped before his, betrayed trouble and doubt. "I took it," she continued, trembling. "If I have done wrong, God forgive me. For I stole it." His face betrayed his amazement, but he did not release her hands. "Why?" he said. "To give it to her," she answered. "To my mother. I thought then that it was right--it was a chance. I thought--now I don't know, I don't know!" she repeated. The shade on her face grew deeper. "I thought I was right then. Now--I--I am frightened." She looked at him with eyes in which her doubts were mirrored. She shivered, she who had been so joyous a moment before, and her hands, which hitherto had lain passive in his, returned his pressure feverishly. "I fear now!" she exclaimed. "I fear! What is it? What has happened--in the last minute?"