“Who are you,” the girl cried, in a bitter resentment, “that you should understand?  What do you know of the sort of life I have led—­we have led together, my father and I?  Oh, I don’t mean that I’m ashamed of it!  We have nothing to feel shame for, but you simply do not know what such a life is.”

Though he writhed with pain, the man nodded over her.  He was so glad that she could carry it through proudly, with a high hand, an erect head.

She spread out her arms before him, a splendid and tragic figure.

“What chance have I ever had?” she demanded.  “No, I am not blaming him.  I am not blaming my father.  I chose to follow him.  I chose it.  But what chance have I had?  Think of the people I have lived among.  Would you have me marry one of them—­one of those men?  I’d rather die.  And yet I cannot go on—­forever.  I am twenty now.  What if my father—­You yourself said yesterday—­Oh, I am afraid!  I tell you I have lain awake at night a hundred times and shivered with cold, terrible fear of what would become of me if—­if anything should happen—­to my father.  And so,” she said, “when I met Arthur Benham last winter, and he—­began to—­he said—­when he begged me to marry him....  Ah, can’t you see?  It meant safety—­safety—­safety!  And I liked him.  I like him now—­very, very much.  He is a sweet boy.  I—­shall be happy with him—­in a peaceful fashion.  And my father—­Oh, I’ll be honest with you,” said she.  “It was my father who decided me.  He was—­he is—­so pathetically pleased with it.  He so wants me to be safe.  It’s all he lives for now.  I—­couldn’t fight against them both, Arthur and my father, so I gave in.  And then when Arthur had to be hidden we came here with him—­to wait.”

She became aware that the man was staring at her with something strange and terrible in his gaze, and she broke off in wonder.  The air of that warm summer morning turned all at once keen and sharp about them—­charged with moment.

“Mademoiselle!” cried Ste. Marie.  “Mademoiselle, are you telling me the truth?”

For some obscure reason she was not angry.  Again she spread out her hands in that gesture of weariness.  She said, “Oh, why should I lie to you?” And the man began to tremble exceedingly.  He stretched out an unsteady hand.

“You—­knew Arthur Benham last winter?” he said.  “Long before his—­before he left his home?  Before that?”

“He asked me to marry him last winter,” said the girl.  “For a long, long time I—­wouldn’t.  But he never let me alone.  He followed me everywhere.  And my father—­”

Ste. Marie clapped his two hands over his face, and a groan came to her through the straining fingers.  He cried, in an agony:  “Mademoiselle!  Mademoiselle!”

He fell upon his knees at her feet, his head bent in what seemed to be an intolerable anguish, his hands over his hidden face.  The girl heard hard-wrung, stumbling, incoherent words wrenched each with an effort out of extreme pain.