“But why not to you?”

“If I am alive and well, I shall not fail you; but if I come not, go to them and demand their protection from the duke, telling them how he has snared you here.  And they will not suffer him to carry you off against your will.  Do you see?  Do you understand?”

“Yes, I see.  But must you fight?”

“Yes, dear, I must fight.  The duke will not trouble you again, I think, before the evening; and if you remember what I have told you, all will be well.”

So I tried to comfort her, believing as I did that no two French gentlemen would desire or dare to refuse her their protection against the duke.  But she was clinging to me now, in great distress that I must fight—­and indeed I had rather have fought at another time myself—­and in fresh terror of her mother’s anger, seeing that I should not be there to bear it for her.

“For,” she said, “we have had a terrible quarrel just before you came.  I told her that unless I saw you within an hour nothing but force should keep me here, and that if they kept me here by force, I would find means to kill myself; and that I would not see nor speak to the duke unless he brought me to you, according to his promise; and that if he sent his necklace again—­for he sent it here half an hour ago—­I would not send it back as I did then, but would fling it out of the window yonder into the cattle pond, where he could go and fetch it out himself.”

And my dearest Marie, finding increased courage from reciting her courageous speech, and from my friendly hearing of it, raised her voice, and her eyes flashed, so that she looked yet more beautiful; and again did I forget inexorable time.  But it struck me that there was small wonder that Mme. Delhasse’s temper had not been of the best nor calculated to endure patiently such a vexatious encounter as befell her when she ran against me on the landing outside her door.

Yet Marie’s courage failed again; and I told her that before we fought I would tell my second of her state, so that if she came not and I were wounded (of worse I did not speak), he would come to the inn and bring her to me.  And this comforted her more, so that she grew calmer, and, passing from our present difficulties, she gave herself to persuading me (nor would the poor girl believe that I needed no persuading) that in no case would she have yielded to the duke, and that her mother had left her in wrath born of an utter despair that Marie’s will in the matter could ever be broken down.

“For I told her,” Marie repeated, “that I would sooner die!”

She paused, and raising her eyes to mine, said to me (and here I think courage was not lacking in her): 

“Yes, although once I had hesitated, now I had rather die.  For when I hesitated, God sent you to my door, that in love I might find salvation.”

Well, I do not know that a man does well to describe all that passes at times like this.  There are things rather meet to be left dwelling in his own heart, sweetening all his life, and causing him to marvel that sinners have such joys conceded to them this side of Heaven; so that in their recollection he may find, mingling with his delight, an occasion for humility such as it little harms any of us to light on now and then.