rned a little awkwardly towards her whom he had
rescued, it was to meet, and quail before, a gaze of admiration more
distinct than words. He bowed, he stammered, his words failed him; he
who had crossed the floor a moment ago, like a young god, to smite,
returned like one discomfited; got somehow to his place by the table,
muffled himself again in his discarded cloak, and for a last touch of
the ridiculous, seeking for anything to restore his countenance, drank
of the wine before him, deep as a porter after a heavy lift. It was
little wonder if Ballantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes,
laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised glass, "To the
champion of the Fair."

Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the counter; she disdained
the mocking laughter; it fell on her ears, but it did not reach her
spirit. For her, the world of living persons was all resumed again into
one pair, as in the days of Eden; there was but the one end in life, the
one hope before her, the one thing needful, the one thing possible,--to
be his.

CHAPTER I

THE PRINCE

That same night there was in the city of Avignon a young man in distress
of mind. Now he sat, now walked in a high apartment, full of draughts
and shadows. A single candle made the darkness visible; and the light
scarce sufficed to show upon the wall, where they had been recently and
rudely nailed, a few miniatures and a copper medal of the young man's
head. The same was being sold that year in London, to admiring
thousands. The original was fair; he had beautiful brown eyes, a
beautiful bright open face; a little feminine, a little hard, a little
weak; still full of the light of youth, but already beginning to be
vulgarised; a sordid bloom come upon it, the lines coarsened with a
touch of puffiness. He was dressed, as for a gala, in peach-colour and
silver; his breast sparkled with stars and was bright with ribbons; for
he had held a levee in the afternoon and received a distinguished
personage incognito. Now he sat with a bowed head, now walked
precipitately to and fro, now went and gazed from the uncurtained
window, where the wind was still blowing, and the lights winked in the
darkness.

The bells of Avignon rose into song as he was gazing; and the high notes
and the deep tossed and drowned, boomed suddenly near or were suddenly
swallowed up, in the current of the mistral. Tears sprang in the pale
blue eyes; the expression of his face was c