“A Catharine!” he repeated, wildly.  The devil gathered up the reins.  “This is a mad, fantastic world!  You kiss my handsome grey eyes a thousand times, then?  What rapture!  Catharine?  What a pretext!  It has no saving grace.  You are mad, I am mad; the world is one of those Italian panoramas!  A thousand kisses, Diane . . .  No; you have ceased to be the huntress.  You are Daphne.  Well, I will play Apollo to your Daphne.  Let us see if you will change into laurel!” Lightly he leaped the table, and she was locked in his arms.  “What! daughter of Perseus and Terra, you are still in human shape?  Ah! then the gods themselves are lies!”

She said nothing, but there was fear and rage in her eyes; and her heart beat furiously against his.

Presently he pressed her from him with a pressure gentle but steady.  “Have no fear, Diane, or Daphne, or whatever you may be pleased to call yourself.  I am a gentleman.  I will not take by force what you would not willingly give.  I have never played with a woman’s heart nor with a man’s honor.  And as for Catharine, I laugh.  It is true that I kissed her cheeks.  I had been drinking, and the wine was still in my head.  I had left you.  My heart was light and happy.  I would have kissed a spaniel, had a spaniel crossed my path instead of a Catharine.  There was no more taint to those kisses I gave to her than to those you have often thoughtlessly given to the flowers in your garden.  I loved you truly; I love you still.  Catharine is a poor pretext.  There is something you have not told me.  Say truthfully that your belief is that I was secretly paying court to that poor Madame de Brissac, and that I wore the grey cloak that terrible night; that I fled from France because of these things.  You say that you are about to become a nun.  You do, then, believe in God.  Well,” releasing her, “I swear to you by that God that I never saw Madame de Brissac; that I was far away from Paris on the nineteenth of February.  You have wantonly and cruelly destroyed the only token I had which was closely associated with my love of you.  This locket means nothing.”  He pulled it forth, took the chain from round his neck.  “You never wore it; it is nothing.  I do not need it to recall your likeness.  Since I have been the puppet, since even God mocks me by bringing you here, take the locket.”

She looked, not at the locket nor at the hand which held it, but into his eyes.  In hers the wrath was gone; there was even a humorous sparkle under the heavy lashes.  She made no sign that she saw the jeweled miniature.  She was thinking how strong he was, how handsomely dignity and pride sat upon his face.

“Will you take it?” he repeated.

Her hands went slowly behind her back.