“If you were to deceive me,” she said, in a low voice, almost in a whisper, the sound of a hiss in it.

“Deceive you?”

It was not easily said, but a question only half comprehended, as when one is recalled from a reverie suddenly, or awakes from a dream at a touch.

“To deceive me would be hell for both of us, for all of us,” said the woman.

He tried to laugh at her, but he could not even bring a smile to his lips at that moment.

Pauline caught his hand and pulled him to the window, opened it, and pointed.

“There.  You know what I mean,” she said.

The roar of Paris floated up to them, the daily toil, the noise of it, its bartering, its going and coming.  Men and women must live, even in a revolution, and to live, work.  Underneath it all there was something unnatural, a murmur, a growl, the sound of an undertone, secret, cruel, deadly; yet the woman’s pointing finger was all Lucien was conscious of just now.

“You know what I mean,” she repeated.

He shook his head slightly, dubiously, for he partly guessed.  In that direction was the Place de la Revolution.

“If this other woman should take my place, if you lied to me, I would have my revenge.  It would be easy.  She is an aristocrat.  One word from me, and do you think you could save her?  Yonder stands the guillotine,” and she made a downward sweep of the arm.  “It falls like that.  You couldn’t save her.”

Lucien stood looking straight before him out of the window.  Pauline still held his hand.  She waited for him to speak, and when he did not, she shook his hand.

“Do you hear what I say?”

“Yes” and then?”

“Then, Lucien, I should have no rival.  You would be mine.  If not, if you turned from me for what I had done—­God!  That would be awful, but I would never forgive, never.  I would speak again.  I would tell them many things.  Nothing should stop me.  You should die too.  That is how I love.  Lucien, Lucien, never make me jealous like that.”

She kissed his hand passionately, then held it close to her breast.  He could feel her heart beat quickly with her excitement.

“That would put an end to all my scheming, wouldn’t it?” he said, drawing her back and closing the window.  “Perhaps Latour would thank you.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Latour,” and she clung to him and kissed him on the lips.

Into Lucien’s complex thought Latour had come, not unnaturally, since this conversation.  This exhibition of latent jealousy was the outcome of his visit.  Without formulating any definite idea, he felt in a vague way that Latour’s career was in some way bound up with his own.  There was something in common between them, each had an interest for the other and in his concerns.  Lucien did not understand why, but Latour might have found an answer to the question as he went back to the Rue Valette.