Madame!" in a terrible voice, "do not play
with fire! You saved my letters, it is true! And for that, for this
time, you shall go free, if God will help me to let you go! But tempt me
not! Tempt me not!" he repeated, turning from her and turning back again
with a gesture of despair, as if he mistrusted the strength of the
restraint which he put upon himself. "I am no more than other men!
Perhaps I am less. And you--you who prate of love, and know not what
love is--could love! could love!"
He stopped on that word as if the word choked him--stopped, struggling
with his passion. At last, with a half-stifled oath, he flung away from
her, halted and hung a moment, then, with a swing of rage, went off again
violently. His feet as he strode along the river-bank trampled the
flowers, and slew the pale water forget-me-not, which grew among the
grasses.
CHAPTER XXIII. A MIND, AND NOT A MIND.
La Tribe tore through the thicket, imagining Carlat and Count Hannibal
hot on his heels. He dared not pause even to listen. The underwood
tripped him, the lissom branches of the alders whipped his face and
blinded him; once he fell headlong over a moss-grown stone, and picked
himself up groaning. But the hare hard-pushed takes no account of the
briars, nor does the fox heed the mud through which it draws itself into
covert.
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