“Sooner or later I must live under some man’s protection, must I not?”
“That is true.”
“Do we ever know,” she went on, “the human being to whom we link our destinies? Now, I believe in this man.”
“Oh, child,” said the General, raising his voice, “you have no idea of all the misery that lies in store for you.”
“I am thinking of his.”
“What a life!” groaned the father.
“A woman’s life,” the girl murmured.
“You have a great knowledge of life!” exclaimed the Marquise, finding speech at last.
“Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it, I will speak more clearly.”
“Speak out, my child … I am a mother.”
Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise said no more. At last she said:
“Hélène, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them than see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in horror.”
“Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite alone.”
“That will do, madame,” the General cried; “we have but one daughter left to us now,” and he looked at Moïna, who slept on. “As for you,” he added, turning to Hélène, “I will put you in a convent.”
“So be it, father,” she said, in calm despair, “I shall die there. You are answerable to God alone for my life and for his soul.”
A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The onlookers during this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of ordinary life, shunned each other’s eyes.
Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up one of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the click of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the General; the soldier’s arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side. The pistol dropped to the floor.
“Girl, you are free,” said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle. “Kiss your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I wish never to see nor to hear of you again.”
“Hélène,” the mother began, “only think of the wretched life before you.”
A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder’s deep chest, all eyes were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
The General rose to his feet. “My hospitality has cost me dear,” he cried. “Before you came you had taken an old man’s life; now you are dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must be unhappiness in this house.”
“And if your daughter is happy?” asked the other, gazing steadily at the General.
The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. “If she is happy with you,” he said, “she is not worth regretting.”
Hélène knelt timidly before her father.
“Father, I love and revere you,” she said, “whether you lavish all the treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the rigor of disgrace. … But I entreat that your last words of farewell shall not be words of anger.”
The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile that he gave Hélène.
“Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come, since you persist in your resolution of entrusting your life to me.”
“Inconceivable!” cried her father.
The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and Hélène fled to her in tears.
“Farewell,” she said, “farewell, mother!” The stranger trembled as Hélène, undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her father’s hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moïna and little Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
“Which way are they going?” exclaimed the General, listening to the footsteps of the two fugitives.—“Madame,” he turned to his wife, “I think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do not understand it; you must know what it means.”
The Marquise shivered.
“For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to combat these tendencies in her character—”
“This will not do—” began the General, but fancying that he heard footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
“Hélène!” he shouted.
His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance of that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted like a counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over his face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to his head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting for revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
“Help!” he thundered, “help!”
He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was roused with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that looked upon the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols, and fired them off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master’s voice; the horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet night was suddenly filled with hideous uproar. The General on the staircase, in pursuit of his daughter, saw the scared faces of the servants flocking from all parts of the house.
“My daughter!” he shouted. “Hélène has been carried off. Search the garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the gendarmerie!—Murder! Help!”
With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great house-dog.
“Hélène!” he cried, “Hélène!”
The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the garden, leaving the General
