Gascon gentleman!" she cried.

"In what am I different, Roxalanne?"

"In that he had laid no wager," she answered, rising suddenly.

My hopes were withering. She was not angry. She was pale, and her
gentle face was troubled - dear God! how sorely troubled! To me
it almost seemed that I had lost.

She flashed me a glance of her blue eyes, and I thought that tears
impended.

"Roxalanne!" I supplicated.

But she recovered the control that for a moment she had appeared
upon the verge of losing. She put forth her hand.

"Adieu, monsieur!" said she.

I glanced from her hand to her face. Her attitude began to anger me,
for I saw that she was not only resisting me, but resisting herself.
In her heart the insidious canker of doubt persisted. She knew - or
should have known - that it no longer should have any place there,
yet obstinately she refrained from plucking it out. 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.