"How could you have lent yourself to such a bargain?" was her next question.
"How, indeed?" I asked in my turn. "From your mother you have heard something of the reputation that attaches to Bardelys. I was a man of careless ways, satiated with all the splendours life could give me, nauseated by all its luxuries. Was it wonderful that I allowed myself to be lured into this affair? It promised some excitement, a certain novelty, difficulties in a path that I had--alas!--ever found all too smooth--for Chatellerault had made your reputed coldness the chief bolster of his opinion that I should not win.
"Again, I was not given to over-nice scruples. I make no secret of my infirmities, but do not blame me too much. If you could see the fine demoiselles we have in Paris, if you could listen to their tenets and take a deep look into their lives, you would not marvel at me. I had never known any but these. On the night of my coming to Lavedan, your sweetness, your pure innocence, your almost childish virtue, dazed me by their novelty. From that first moment I became your slave. Then I was in your garden day by day. And here, in this old Languedoc garden with you and your roses, during the languorous days of my convalescence, is it wonderful that some of the purity, some of the sweetness that was of you and of your roses, should have crept into my heart and cleansed it a little? Ah, mademoiselle!" I cried--and, coming close to her, I would have bent my knee in intercession but that she restrained me.
"Monsieur," she interrupted, "we harass ourselves in vain. This can have but one ending."
Her tones were cold, but the coldness I knew was forced--else had she not said "we harass ourselves." Instead of quelling my ardour, it gave it fuel.
"True, mademoiselle," I cried, almost exultantly. "It can end but one way!"
She caught my meaning, and her frown deepened. I went too fast, it seemed.
"It had better end now, monsieur. There is too much between us. You wagered to win me to wife." She shuddered. "I could never forget it."
"Mademoiselle," I denied stoutly, "I did not."
"How?" She caught her breath. "You did not?"
"No," I pursued boldly. "I did not wager to win you. I wagered to win a certain Mademoiselle de Lavedan, who was unknown to me--but not you, not you."
She smiled, with never so slight a touch of scorn.
"Your distinctions are very fine--too fine for me, monsieur."
"I implore you to be reasonable. Think reasonably."