Rafael Sabatini

“ I trampled my nascent tenderness underfoot, and in its room I set a harshness that I did not feel—a harshness of defiance and menace.
“It can be, it will be, and, as God lives, it shall be, if you persist in your unreasonable attitude.”
“Monsieur, have mercy!”
“Yes, when you shall be pleased to show me the way to it by having mercy upon me. If I have sinned, I have atoned. But that is a closed question now; to reopen it were futile. Take heed of this, Roxalanne: there is one thing—one only in all France—can save your father.” ”

“ I have no longer an army of retainers. A couple of men and a maid or two shall constitute our household. Yet I shall account my wealth well lost if for love's sake you'll share with me the peace of my obscurity. I am poor, mademoiselle yet no poorer even now than that Gascon gentleman, René de Lesperon, for whom you held me, and on whom you bestowed the priceless treasure of your heart.”
“Oh, might it have pleased God that you had remained that poor Gascon gentleman!” she cried.
“In what am I different, Roxalanne?”
“In that he had laid no wager,” she answered, rising suddenly. ”

“ But the swift heave of her bosom told me that my words were not without effect.
“Do you know nothing of the bargain that I made with Chatellerault?” she asked in a voice that held, I thought, some trace of misery.
“Chatellerault was a cheat!” I cried. “No man of honour in France would have accounted himself under obligation to pay that wager. I paid it, not because I thought the payment due, but that by its payment I might offer you a culminating proof of my sincerity.”
“Be that as it may,” said she, “I passed him my word to—to marry him, if he set you at liberty.” ”

“ Would to God, Roxalanne, that I had told you!” I cried, and it seemed to me that the sincerity ringing in my voice drove some of the harshness from her countenance, some of the coldness from her glance.
“Unfortunately,” I pursued, “it always seemed to me either not yet time, or already too late. Yet so soon as I regained my liberty, my first thought was of that. While the wager existed I might not ask you to become my wife, lest I should seem to be carrying out the original intention which embarked me upon the business of wooing you, and brought me here to Languedoc. ”

“ If she would not give herself, by God, I would compel her to sell herself. And I took no shame in doing it, for by doing it I was saving her and saving myself from a life of unhappiness.
“Roxalanne!” I cried. The imperiousness of my voice arrested and compelled her—perhaps against her very will. ”

“ There was that wager. But for that same obstinacy she must have realized the reason of my arguments, the irrefutable logic of my payment. She denied me, and in denying me she denied herself, for that she had loved me she had herself told me, and that she could love me again I was assured, if she would but see the thing in the light of reason and of justice.
“Roxalanne, I did not come to Lavédan to say 'Good-bye' to you. I seek from you a welcome, not a dismissal.”
“Yet my dismissal is all that I can give. Will you not take my hand? May we not part in friendly spirit?” ”

“ I cried—and, coming close to her, I would have bent my knee in intercession but that she restrained me.
“Monsieur,” she interrupted, “we harass ourselves in vain. This can have but one ending.”
Her tones were cold, but the coldness I knew was forced—else had she not said “we harass ourselves.” ”