Gerard meant to hurt, but Marguerite wore an armour against him and his arrows were much too blunt to pierce it. She had a purpose of her own to serve, of which Gerard de Montignac knew nothing; she was clutching at a desperate chance—if, indeed, so frail a thing could be called a chance—not of merely saving her lover’s life, but of so much more that she hardly dared to think upon it. Her only weapon now and for a long heart-breaking time to come, was patience.
“You are unjust,” she said, without any anger, and without any appeal that he should reconsider his words. Gerard suddenly remembered the last words that the black-bearded Basha had spoken as he climbed onto his mule.
Marguerite had spoken just in his tone. Argument and prayer were of no value now. It was all written, all fated. What would be, would be. Either Gerard de Montignac would drop that revolver from his hand and her desperate chance become a little less frail than before, or he would not.
“What was it that woman in the spangled skirt used to say of you?” Gerard asked, with a seeming irrelevance.
“Yes, Henriette. You had a look of fate. Yes! She was right, too. It was that look which set you apart, more than your beauty. Indeed, you weren’t beautiful then, Marguerite.”
He was gazing at her moodily. The sharp anger had become a sullenness. Marguerite had grown into beauty since those days, but it was not the roseleaf beauty born of days without anxiety and nights without unrest. It was the beauty of one who is haunted by the ghosts of dead dreams and who wakes in the dark hours to weep very silently lest some one overhear. Destined for greater sorrows or perhaps greater joys than fall to the common lot! That was what Henriette had meant! And looking at Marguerite, Gerard, with a little ungenerous throb of pleasure, perceived that at all events the greater joys, if ever they had fallen to her, had faded away long since.
“These have been unhappy years for you, Marguerite,” he said.
“For both of us,” she answered. “How could they have been anything else? Paul had lost everything for which he had striven, whilst I knew that it was I who had caused his loss.”
“He didn’t have to strive for me,” Marguerite returned, with just the hint of a smile and more than a hint of pride. “I was his from his first call—no, even before he called.”