He looked at her and smiled, and bent towards the warmth of the fire.

"All that I say you shall be; and--the year is all winter for the poor, Folle-Farine."

The light on her face faded; a sudden apprehension tightened at her heart; on her face gathered the old fierce deadly antagonism which constant insult and attack had taught her to a.s.sume on the first instant of menace as her only buckler.

She knew not what evil threatened; but vaguely she felt that treason was close about her.

"If you do not mock me," she said slowly, "if you do not--how will you make me what you promise?"

"I will show the world to you, you to the world; your beauty will do the rest."

The darkness and the perplexed trouble deepened on her face; she rose and stood and looked at him, her teeth shut together with a quick sharp ring, her straight proud brows drew together in stormy silence; all the tigress in her was awoke and rising ready to spring; yet amid that dusky pa.s.sion, that withering scorn of doubt, there was an innocent pathetic wonder, a vague desolation and disappointment, that were childlike and infinitely sad.

"This is a wondrous pear you offer me!" she said, bitterly. "And so cheap?--it must be rotten somewhere."

"It is golden. Who need ask more?"

And he laughed his little low laugh in his throat.

Then, and then only, she understood him.

With a sudden unconscious instinctive action her hand sought her knife, but the girdle was empty; she sprang erect, her face on fire with a superb fury, her eyes blazing like the eyes of a wild beast's by night, a magnificence of scorn and rage upon her quivering features.

Her voice rang clear and hard and cold as ring the blows of steel.

"I ask more,--that I should pluck it with clean hands, and eat of it with pure lips. Strange quibble for a beggar,--homeless, penniless, tribeless, nationless! So you think, no doubt. But we who are born outlawed are born free,--and do not sell our freedom. Let me go."

He watched her with a musing smile, a dreamy calm content; all this tempest of her scorn, all this bitterness of her disdain, all this whirlwind of her pa.s.sion and her suffering, seemed but to beguile him more and make him surer of her beauty, of her splendor, of her strength.

"She would be a great creature to show to the world," he thought, as he drooped his head and watched her through his half-closed eyelids, as the Red Mouse watched the sleeper in the poppies. "Let you go?" he said, with that slow, ironic smile,--"let you go? Why should I let you go, Folle-Farine?"

She stooped as a tigress stoops to rise the stronger for her death spring, and her voice was low, on a level with his ear.

"Why? Why? To save your own life--if you are wise."

He laughed in his throat again.

"Ah, ah! It is never wise to threaten, Folle-Farine. I do not threaten.

You are foolish; you are unreasonable: and that is the privilege of a woman. I am not angered at it. On the contrary, it adds to your charm.

You are a beautiful, reckless, stubborn, half-mad, half-savage creature.

Pa.s.sion and liberty become you,--become you like your ignorance and your ferocity. I would not for worlds that you should change them."

"Let me go!" she cried, across his words.

"Oh, fool! the winter will be hard,--and you are bare of foot,--and you have not a crust!"

"Let me go."

"Ah! Go?--to beg your way to Paris, and to creep through the cellars and the hospitals till you can see your lover's face, and to crouch a moment at his feet to hear him mutter a curse on you in payment for your pilgrimage; and then to slit your throat or his--in your despair, and lie dead in all your loveliness in the common ditch."

"Let me go, I say!"

"Or else, more like, come back to me in a week's time and say, 'I was mad but now I am wise. Give me the golden pear. What matter a little speck? What is golden may be rotten; but to all lips it is sweet.'"

"Let me go!"

She stood at bay before him, pale in her scorn of rags, her right hand clinched against her breast, her eyes breathing fire, her whole att.i.tude instinct with the tempest of contempt and loathing, which she held down thus, pa.s.sive and almost wordless, because she once had promised never to be thankless to this man.

He gazed at her and smiled, and thought how beautiful that chained whirlwind of her pa.s.sions looked; but he did not touch her nor even go nearer to her. There was a dangerous gleam in her eyes that daunted him. Moreover, he was patient, humorous, gentle, cruel, wise,--all in one; and he desired to tame and to beguile her, and to see her slowly drawn into the subtle sweetness of the powers of gold; and to enjoy the yielding of each moral weakness one by one, as the southern boy slowly pulls limb from limb, wing from wing, of the cicala.

"I will let you go, surely," he said, with his low, grim laugh. "I keep no woman prisoner against her will. But think one moment longer, Folle-Farine. You will take no gift at my hands?"

"None."

"You want to go,--penniless as you are?"

"I will go so,--no other way."

"You will fall ill on the road afresh."

"That does not concern you."

"You will starve."

"That is my question."

"You will have to herd with the street dogs."

"Their bite is better than your welcome."

"You will be suspected,--most likely imprisoned. You are an outcast."

"That may be."

"You will be driven to public charity."

"Not till I need a public grave."

"You will have never a glance of pity, never a look of softness, from your northern G.o.d; he has no love for you, and he is in his grave most likely. Icarus falls--always."

For the first time she quailed as though struck by a sharp blow; but her voice remained inflexible and serene.

"I can live without love or pity, as I can without home or gold. Once for all,--let me go."

"I will let you go," he said, slowly, as he moved a little away. "I will let you go in seven days' time. For seven days you shall do as you please; eat, drink, be clothed, be housed, be feasted, be served, be beguiled,--as the rich are. You shall taste all these things that gold gives, and which you, being ignorant, dare rashly deride and refuse. If, when seven days end, you still choose, you shall go, and as poor as you came. But you will not choose, for you are a woman, Folle-Farine!"

Ere she knew his intent he had moved the panel and drawn it behind him, and left her alone,--shut in a trap like the birds that Claudis Flamma had netted in his orchards.