What is your name?"
"Pierre."
"Pierre? I like that name. Pierre, to make me happy, will you go? Your
face is all white and touched with a shadow of blue. It is the cold.
Oh, won't you go?" Then she pleaded, finding him obdurate: "If you
won't go for me, then go for your father."
He raised his head with a sudden laughter, and, raising it, the wind
beat into his face fiercely and the particles of snow whipped
his skin.
"Dear Pierre, then for your mother?"
He bowed his head.
"Not for all the people who love you and wait for you now by some warm
fire--some cozy fire, all yellow and bright?"
He took her hands and with them covered his eyes. "Listen: I have no
father; I have no mother."
"Pierre! Oh, Pierre, I'm sorry!"
"And for the rest of 'em, I've killed a man. The whole world hates me;
the whole world's hunting me."
The small hands tugged away. He dared not raise his bowed head for
fear of her eyes. And then the hands came back to him and touched
his face.
She was saying tremulously: "Then he deserved to be killed.
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