answer before the Committee of Public Safety, for having fooled the representatives of the people."
"She'll answer for it with her life," murmured Déroulède. "And with mine!" he added half audibly.
Anne Mie did not hear him; her pathetic little soul was filled with a great, an overwhelming pity for Juliette and for Paul.
"Before they took her away," she said, placing her thin, delicate-looking hands on his arm. "I ran to her, and bade her farewell. The soldiers pushed me roughly aside; but I contrived to kiss her—and then she whispered a few words to me."
"Yes? What were they?"
"'It was an oath,' she said. 'I swore it to my father and to my dead brother. Tell him,'" repeated Anne Mie slowly.
An oath!
Now he understood, and oh! how he pitied her. How terribly she must have suffered in her poor, harassed soul when her noble, upright nature fought against this hideous treachery.
That she was true and brave in herself, of that Déroulède had no doubt. And now this awful sin upon her conscience, which must be causing her endless misery.
And, alas! the atonement would never free her from the load of self-condemnation.
