I am your friend, and the friend of your friends;
in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of
sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what
I see; it _must_ have and give solace. _Leave me!_"

This time, in the "_leave me_" there was an intonation so bitter and so
imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one
moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him
dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was
opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick
rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement;
it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his
hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the
room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.

The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to
wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to
time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more
myself--re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless,
not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.

"It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he.

"It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said. "All these weary days
I have not heard from you one word, and I was crushed with the
possibility, growing to certainty, that you would depart without saying
farewell!"

"Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck--that you do not know me?
Must I show and teach you my character? You _will_ have proof that I
can be a firm friend? Without clear proof this hand will not lie still
in mine, it will not trust my shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof
is ready. I come to justify myself."

"Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, Monsieur; I can listen
now."

"Then, in the first place, you must go out with me a good distance into
the town. I came on purpose to fetch you."

Without questioning his meaning, or sounding his plan, or offering the
semblance of an objection, I re-tied my bonnet: I was ready.

The route he took was by the boulevards: he several times made me sit
down on the seats stationed under the lime-trees; he did not ask if I
was tired, but looked, and drew his own conclusions.

"All these weary days," said he, repeating my words, with a gentle,
kindly mimicry of my voice and foreign accent, not new from his lips,
and of which the playful