"You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly," he said slowly. "I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you brought me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing my blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing of /my crime/" (here his lips were compressed) "but the memory; I have tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house.
Indeed, I would not even allow your daughter to--""/My daughter/!" cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at Helene. "Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you--""The two hours are not yet over," said the other; "if you kill me or give me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes--and in mine."At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in dumb amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those eyes which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid of showing weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker already.
"An old man! You can never have seen a family," he said, with a father's glance at his wife and children.
"Yes, an old man," echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
"Fly!" cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest.
"Our compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be purveyor to the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder.""I know that," said the other patiently. "There is not a spot on French soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man's justice, like God's, took all into account, if man's justice deigned to inquire which was the monster--the murderer or his victim--then I might hold up my head among my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that blow from an axe? I constituted myself his judge and executioner; I stepped in where man's justice failed. That was my crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter though you have made your hospitality, Ishall not forget it. I shall always bear in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in the world, and you are that man. . . .
But I could wish that you had showed yourself more generous!"He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to whisper something in her mother's ear.
"Ah! . . ."
At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had seen Moina lying dead. There stood Helene and the murderer had turned instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his face.
"What is it, dear?" asked the General.
"Helene wants to go with him."
The murderer's face flushed.
"If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary exclamation," Helene said in a low voice, "I will fulfil her wishes.
She glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the girl's eyes fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.
"Helene, did you go up to the room where----?""Yes, father."
"Helene" (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), "is this the first time that you have seen this man?""Yes, father."
"Then it is not natural that you should intend to--""If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true.""Oh! child," said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but that her husband could hear her, "you are false to all the principles of honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of this stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that--""Oh, suppose everything, madame," Helene said coldly.
But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger, watching her, guessed the mother's language from the girl's tears, and turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame, such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a Leyden jar.
"Dear!" she cried, turning to her husband, "this is the Fiend himself.
He can divine everything!"
The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
"He means ruin for you," Helene said to the murderer.
The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General's arm, and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier's brain and left him powerless.
"I will repay you now for your hospitality," he said, "and then we shall be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all, what should I do now with my life?""You could repent," answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope as only glows in a young girl's eyes.
"/I shall never repent/," said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he raised his head proudly.
"His hands are stained with blood," the father said.
"I will wipe it away," she answered.
"But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?" said her father, not daring now to look at the stranger.
The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
"And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love for yourself alone?""Then do you too reject me?" Helene's cry rang painfully through the hearts of all who heard her. "Farewell, then, to you all; I will die.""What does this mean?" asked the father and mother.
Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.