“Yes, yes.” Then she added, “And he desired revenge on a woman.”
The Chevalier nodded quietly. “If he had secured from François that paper which De Nérac is carrying, revenge was in his hands. But the madman has struck too soon; it is just as well for all of us.” He looked up and down the dimly lit passage. “Some day,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone that was cruelly tragic, “François’s fate will be mine.”
The girl flung out a hand of passionate protest. Her voice choked.
“I feel it for certain,” the Chevalier continued, “it is fate, the fate of our—” He checked himself sharply. “Oh, I shall not resent my turn when it comes; I have no desire to live now.”
“No.” She, too, stretched arms of impotent appeal against the grip of a pitiless destiny. “No, there is nothing to live for, now.”
The Chevalier looked into her eyes with the earnest scrutiny of deep affection. “So your question, too, has been answered?” he whispered.
“Only as I expected. Could it be otherwise?”
“All for De Nérac,” he commented aloud to himself; “all for De Nérac—love, success, glory, honour, and, as if that were not enough, he and that wanton will frustrate the revenge and punishment——”
“Yes, he will do that. It is the destiny of France.”
The thought imposed silence on both. André’s measured breathing could be heard dying away in peaceful innocence in the dim passage.