I paused, and for a moment we were silent. Then suddenly she looked up; her fingers tightened upon mine.
"Monsieur de Lesperon," she pleaded, "of what do speak? You are torturing me, monsieur."
"Look in my face, Roxalanne. Can you see nothing there of how I am torturing myself?"
"Then tell me, monsieur," she begged, her voice a very caress of suppliant softness,--"tell me what vexes you and sets a curb upon your tongue. You exaggerate, I am assured. You could do nothing dishonourable, nothing vile."
"Child," I cried, "I thank God that you are right! I cannot do what is dishonourable, and I will not, for all that a month ago I pledged myself to do it!"
A sudden horror, a doubt, a suspicion flashed into her glance.
"You--you do not mean that you are a spy?" she asked; and from my heart a prayer of thanks went up to Heaven that this at least it was mine frankly to deny.
"No, no--not that. I am no spy."
Her face cleared again, and she sighed.
"It is, I think, the only thing I could not forgive. Since it is not that, will you not tell me what it is?"
For a moment the temptation to confess, to tell her everything, was again upon me. But the futility of it appalled me.
"Don't ask me," I besought her; "you will learn it soon enough." For I was confident that once my wager was paid, the news of it and of the ruin of Bardelys would spread across the face of France like a ripple over water. Presently-"Forgive me for having come into your life, Roxalanne!" I implored her, and then I sighed again. "Helas! Had I but known you earlier! I did not dream such women lived in this worn-out France."
"I will not pry, monsieur, since your resolve appears to be so firm. But if--if after I have heard this thing you speak of," she said presently, speaking with averted eyes, "and if, having heard it, I judge you more mercifully than you judge yourself, and I send for you, will you--will you come back to Lavedan?"
My heart gave a great bound--a great, a sudden throb of hope. But as sudden and as great was the rebound into despair.
"You will not send for me, be assured of that," I said with finality; and we spoke no more.
I took the oars and plied them vigorously. I was in haste to end the situation. Tomorrow I must think of my departure, and, as I rowed, I pondered the words that had passed between us. Not one word of love had there been, and yet, in the very omission of it, avowal had lain on either side. A strange wooing had been mine--a wooing that precluded the possibility of winning, and yet a wooing that had won. Aye, it had won; but it might not take. I made fine distinctions and quaint paradoxes as I tugged at my oars, for the human mind is a curiously complex thing, and with some of us there is no such spur to humour as the sting of pain.