Gently he caught her hand and drew her back to the seat.

“Pardon, but I can not lose you so soon.  Mademoiselle is doubtless at prayer and may not be interrupted.  I have so many questions to ask.”

Madame was pale, but her eyes were glowing.  She folded her hands with a passiveness which boded future ill.

“When you said that you trapped me that night at the Palais Royal, simply to take a feather from my plume, you did not mean that.  You had some deeper motive.”

Madame’s fingers locked and unlocked.  “Monsieur . . . !” she began,

“Why, it seems only yesterday that it was ’Paul’,” he interrupted.

“Monsieur, I beg of you to let me go.  You are emulating Monsieur d’Herouville, and that conduct is beneath you.”

“But will you listen to what I have to say?”

“I will listen,” with a dangerous quiet.  “Go on, Monsieur; tell me how much you love me this day.  Tell me the story of the oriole, whose mate this year is not the old.  Go on; I am listening.”

A twinge of his recent cowardice came back to him.  He moistened his lips.

“Why do you doubt my love?’”

“Doubt it!  Have I not a peculiar evidence of it this very moment?” sarcastically.  Madame was gathering her forces slowly but surely.

“I have asked you to be my wife, not even knowing who you are.”

Madame laughed, and a strain of wild merriment crept into the music of it.  “You have great courage, Monsieur.”

“It is laughable, then?”

“If you saw it from my angle of vision, you would also laugh.”  The tone was almost insolent.

“You are married?” a certain hardness in his voice.

Madame drew farther back, for he looked like the man who had, a few nights since, seized her madly in his arms.

“If you are married,” he said, his grey eyes metallic, “I will go at once, for I should know that you are not a woman worthy of a man’s love.”

“Go on, Monsieur; you interest me.  Having asked me to listen to your protestations of love, you would now have me listen to your analysis of my character.  Go on.”

“That is not a denial.”

“Indeed!”

“D’Herouville called you ‘Madame.’”

“Well?”

“What am I to believe?”

“What you will:  one way or the other, I am equally indifferent.”  Ah, Madame!

The Chevalier saw that if he became serious, violent, or ill-tempered, he was lost.  He pulled himself together.  He smiled.

“Why are you not in Montreal?  I understand Mademoiselle Catharine is there.”

The Chevalier laughed.  “You make me laugh, Diane.”

“Why are you here in Quebec?”

“And you, Madame?”

“Perhaps I was seeking adventures.”

“Well, perhaps I, too, came with that purpose.  Come, Madame; neither of us is telling the truth.”