She Would, and Would Not

We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession as a
stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amounting almost
to unscrupulousness, which the best display in their dealings with a
retiring foe. But there are concessions which touch even a good woman's
conscience; and Madame de Tavannes, free by the tenure of a blow, and
with that exception treated from hour to hour with rugged courtesy,
shrank appalled before the task which confronted her.

To ignore what La Tribe had told her, to remain passive when a movement
on her part might save men, women, and children from death, and a whole
city from massacre--this was a line of conduct so craven, so selfish,
that from the first she knew herself incapable of it. But to take the
only other course open to her, to betray her husband and rob him of that,
the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not courage only, not
devotion only, but a hardness proof against reproaches as well as against
punishment. And the Countess was no fanatic. No haze of bigotry
glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than
its own. Even while she acknowledged the necessity of the act and its
ultimate righteousness, even while she owned the obligation which lay
upon her to perform it, she saw it as he would see it, and saw herself as
he would see her.

True, he had done her a great wrong; and this in the eyes of some might
pass for punishment. But he had saved her life where many had perished;
and, the wrong done, he had behaved to her with fantastic generosity. In
return for which she was to ruin him? It was not hard to imagine what he
would say of her, and of the reward with which she had requited him.