“Monsieur, I am no politician.  Many dear friends of mine have been foully murdered.  I look for no better fate for myself.”

“I was rather trying to explain my position,” said Latour.

“You do not explain your peculiar interest in me.”

“You hardly give me time, mademoiselle,” he returned with a faint smile.  “Still, you can appreciate that my sympathies are with the people.  That is not the entire truth, however.  I had ambition, and the revolution was my opportunity.  A strong man might grasp power, and I would be that strong man.”

“Are there not many others in the Convention with similar ambition?”

“I think not.  Whatever power I might obtain was not for my own glory, but was to be laid at the feet of a woman.  Mademoiselle does not remember, perhaps, a certain day some three or four years since, when the horses attached to her coach took fright and ran away.  They might have been stopped by the coachman, but they appeared to have got the better of him.  It seemed to a man standing there, a poor student, that the occupant of that coach was in danger.  He rushed forward, and with some difficulty stopped the horses.”

“I remember it perfectly,” said Jeanne.

“Mademoiselle, that poor student had in that hour seen a vision from heaven, a woman so beautiful, so far beyond all other women, that he worshiped her.  He wandered the streets of Paris only to catch a glimpse of her.  He enthroned her on the altar of his soul, and bowed down to her.  It was a hopeless passion, yet its hopelessness had no power to kill it, rather it grew each day, took stronger possession of his dreams each night, until, reaching forward, he conceived the possibility of winning what his soul desired.  That poor student was Raymond Latour.  You see, mademoiselle, when you think of me as a red republican, you hardly do me full justice.”

Jeanne did not answer.  What possible answer was there to such a confession as this?

“Deputy Latour became a power,” he went on quietly.  “Many things became possible.  Mademoiselle had a lover, Lucien Bruslart, a villain, a liar to her and his country.  Raymond Latour, with all his faults, was a better man than he, more honest, more worthy a woman’s regard, no matter who that woman might be.”

He paused for a moment, but still she found no words to answer him.

“This Bruslart for some purpose of his own sent for mademoiselle to come to Paris.  I discovered that he had done so.  It was an opportunity to show you what sort of a man he was whom you loved.  I should have balked his intention and brought you here, had it not been for the bungling of those who served me, and the courage of this man Barrington who has played Bruslart’s game for him.”

“Unwittingly,” said Jeanne.  “I grant that Lucien Bruslart is not a worthy man; you must not class the other with him.”  In a few words Jeanne told him how she had written the letter, how Richard Barrington came to know where she was hidden.