mp's blood. Reanimated by him, she awakened his imagination of
the vagrant splendours of existence and the rebel delights which have
their own laws and 'nature' for an applauding mother. Radiant Alps rose
in his eyes, and the morning born in the night suns that from mountain
and valley, over sea and desert, called on all earth to witness their
death. The magnificence of the contempt of humanity posed before him
superbly satanesque, grand as thunder among the crags and it was not
a sensual cry that summoned him from his pedlar labours, pack on back
along the level road, to live and breathe deep, gloriously mated: Renee
kindled his romantic spirit, and could strike the feeling into him that
to be proud of his possession of her was to conquer the fretful vanity
to possess. She was not a woman of wiles and lures.

Once or twice she consulted her watch: but as she professed to have no
hunger, Beauchamp's entreaty to her to stay prevailed, and the subtle
form of compliment to his knightly manliness in her remaining with
him, gave him a new sense of pleasure that hung round her companionable
conversation, deepening the meaning of the words, or sometimes
contrasting the sweet surface commonplace with the undercurrent of
strangeness in their hearts, and the reality of a tragic position. Her
musical volubility flowed to entrance and divert him, as it did.

Suddenly Beauchamp glanced upward.

Renee turned from a startled contemplation of his frown, and beheld Mrs.
Rosamund Culling in the room.

CHAPTER XLI. A LAME VICTORY

The intruder was not a person that had power to divide them; yet she
came between their hearts with a touch of steel.

'I am here in obedience to your commands in your telegram of this
evening,' Rosamund replied to Beauchamp's hard stare at her; she
courteously spoke French, and acquitted herself demurely of a bow to the
lady present.

Renee withdrew her serious eyes from Beauchamp. She rose and
acknowledged the bow.

'It is my first visit to England, madame!

'I could have desired, Madame la marquise, more agreeable weather for
you.'

'My friends in England will dispel the bad weather for me, madame';
Renee smiled softly: 'I have been studying my French-English
phrase-book, that I may learn how dialogues are conducted in your
country to lead to certain ceremonies when old friends meet, and without
my book I am at fault. I am longing to be embraced by you... if it will
not be offending your ru