"I rule there, Madam," he said simply. "Over thrall and guest?" "Over all who come there, Madam." "I've heard of the time," she went on icily, "when this country was younger, how the _seigneurs_ who held right under the old French kings claimed the law of the high, low and middle justice. Life, death, honor, all lay in their hands--in the hands of individuals. But I thought those times past. I thought that this river was different from the St. Lawrence. I thought that this was a republic, and inhabited by men. I thought the South had gentlemen--" "You taunt me, my dear lady, my dear girl. But be not so sure that times have changed. Out beyond, there, where we are going, I could put you a mile back from the river, and you would find yourself in a wilderness the most pathless in the world to-day, worse than the St. Lawrence ever knew at any time, more lawless, more beyond the reach of any law. These lands out here are wild; yes, and they breed wild men. They have been the home of others besides myself, lawless, restless under any restraint. If you come to wildernesses, and if you come to the law of the individual, I say we're only just approaching that sort of thing right now, and here." She looked at him, some inarticulate sort of sound in her throat, fully frightened now, seeing how mistaken she had been. He went on: "Out there in the big valleys beyond the river, you would indeed disappear. No man could guess what had become of you. You would never be found again. And without any doubt or question, Madam, if you force me to it, you shall have your answer in that way. I'm not a boy to be fooled with, to be denied. I rule out there, over free and thrall. There's where you're going. Your other jailer told you the truth!" She looked at him slowly and fully now, the color fading from her face. Her soul had touched the steel in his own soul. She knew that, once aroused, this man would hesitate at nothing. Crowded beyond his limit, there was no measure he would not employ. Other means must be employed with such a nature as his. She temporized. "Listen. You are a man of family and traditions,--my late guardian told me. You have been chosen to a position of trust, you are one of the lawmakers of your own state. Do you ever stop to reflect what you are doing, how you are abandoning yourself, your own traditions, your own duties, when you speak as you have been speaking to me? I had committed no crime. I am held by no process of law. You take risks." "I know. I have thrown it all away in the balance. If these things were known, I would be ruined." He spoke dully and evenly, indifferently.