“I see that you are afraid,” I said.  “You are wrong to be afraid of me.  I shall certainly not do you any harm.  You are too pretty for me to think of anything but of caressing you.”

“Yes; but your uncles will kill me,” she cried; “you know they will.  Surely you would not have me killed?  Since you love me, save me; I will love you afterwards.”

“Oh, yes; afterwards, afterwards,” I answered, laughing with a silly, unbelieving air; “after you have had me hanged by those gendarmes to whom I have just given such a drubbing.  Come, now; prove that you love me at once; I will save you afterwards.  You see, I can talk about ‘afterwards’ too.”

I pursued her round the room.  Though she fled from me, she gave no signs of anger, and still appealed to me with soft words.  In me the poor girl was husbanding her one hope, and was fearful of losing it.  Ah, if I had only been able to realize what such a woman as she was, and what my own position meant!  But I was unable then.  I had but one fixed idea—­the idea which a wolf may have on a like occasion.

At last, as my only answer to all her entreaties was, “Do you love me, or are you fooling me?” she saw what a brute she had to deal with, and, making up her mind accordingly, she came towards me, threw her arms round my neck, hid her face in my bosom, and let me kiss her hair.  Then she put me gently from her, saying: 

“Ah, mon Dieu! don’t you see how I love you—­how I could not help loving you from the very first moment I saw you?  But don’t you understand that I hate your uncles, and that I would be yours alone?”

“Yes,” I replied, obstinately, “because you say to yourself:  ’This is a booby whom I shall persuade to do anything I wish, by telling him that I love him; he will believe it, and I will take him away to be hanged.’  Come; there is only one word which will serve if you love me.”

She looked at me with an agonized air.  I sought to press my lips to hers whenever her head was not turned away.  I held her hands in mine.  She was powerless now to do more than delay the hour of her defeat.  Suddenly the colour rushed back to the pale face; she began to smile; and with an expression of angelic coquetry, she asked: 

“And you—­do you love me?”

From this moment the victory was hers.  I no longer had power to will what I wished.  The lynx in me was subdued; the man rose in its place; and I believe that my voice had a human ring, as I cried for the first time in my life: 

“Yes, I love you!  Yes, I love you!”

“Well, then,” she said, distractedly, and in a caressing tone, “let us love each other and escape together.”

“Yes, let us escape,” I answered.  “I loathe this house, and I loathe my uncles.  I have long wanted to escape.  And yet I shall only be hanged, you know.”

“They won’t hang you,” she rejoined with a laugh; “my betrothed is a lieutenant-general.”