“I have made a terrible mistake, m’sieu David,” she said, her voice barely rising above a whisper.  “I’m sorry I hurt you.  I thought it was some one else behind the rock.  But I can not tell you more than that—­ever.  And I know it is impossible for us to be friends.”  She paused, one of her hands creeping to her bare throat, as if to cover the throbbing he had seen there.

“Why is it impossible?” he demanded, leaning away from his pillows so that he might bring himself nearer to her.

“Because—­you are of the police, m’sieu.”

“The police, yes,” he said, his heart thrumming inside his breast.  “I am Sergeant Carrigan.  I am out after Roger Audemard, a murderer.  But my commission has nothing to do with the daughter of St. Pierre Boulain.  Please—­let’s be friends—­”

He held out his hand; and in that moment David Carrigan placed another thing higher than duty—­and in his eyes was the confession of it, like the glow of a subdued fire.  The girl’s fingers drew more closely at her throat, and she made no movement to accept his hand.

“Friends,” he repeated.  “Friends—­in spite of the police.”

Slowly the girl’s eyes had widened, as if she saw that new-born thing riding over all other things in his swiftly beating heart.  And afraid of it, she drew a step away from him.

“I am not St. Pierre Boulain’s daughter,” she said, forcing the words out one by one.  “I am—­his wife.”

VII

Afterward Carrigan wondered to what depths he had fallen in the first moments of his disillusionment.  Something like shock, perhaps even more than that, must have betrayed itself in his face.  He did not speak.  Slowly his outstretched arm dropped to the white counterpane.  Later he called himself a fool for allowing it to happen, for it was as if he had measured his proffered friendship by what its future might hold for him.  In a low, quiet voice Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain was saying again that she was St. Pierre’s wife.  She was not excited, yet he understood now why it was he had thought her eyes were very dark.  They had changed swiftly.  The violet freckles in them were like little flecks of gold.  They were almost liquid in their glow, neither brown nor black now, and with that threat of gathering lightning in them.  For the first time he saw the slightest flush of color in her cheeks.  It deepened even as he held out his hand again.  He knew that it was not embarrassment.  It was the heat of the fire back of her eyes.  “It’s—­funny,” he said, making an effort to redeem himself with a lie and smiling.  “You rather amaze me.  You see, I have been told this St. Pierre is an old, old man—­so old that he can’t stand on his feet or go with his brigades, and if that is the truth, it is hard for me to picture you as his wife.  But that isn’t a reason why we should not be friends.  Is it?”

He felt that he was himself again, except for the three days’ growth of beard on his face.  He tried to laugh, but it was rather a poor attempt.  And St. Pierre’s wife did not seem to hear him.  She was looking at him, looking into and through him with those wide-open glowing eyes.  Then she sat down, out of reach of the hand which he had held toward her.