he torture to be a captive: to feel one's best
days slipping away, and fate still denying to us poor devils the chance
which even the luckiest--God knows--find little enough." He laughed,
and to Dorothea the laugh sounded passing bitter. "You will not
understand how a man feels; how even so unimportant a creature as I
must bear a sort of personal grudge against his fate."

"I am trying to understand," said Dorothea, gently.

"But this you can understand, how a prisoner loves the sunshine: not
because, through his grating, it warms him; but because it is the
sunshine, and he sees it. Mademoiselle, I am not grateful; I see
merely, and adore. Some day you shall pause by this window and see a
cloud of dust on the Fosse Way--the last of us prisoners as they march
us from Axcester to the place of our release; and, seeing it, you shall
close the book upon a chapter, but not without remembering"--he
touched her hand again, but now his fingers closed on it, and he raised
it to his lips,--"not without remembering how and when one Frenchman
said, 'God bless you, Mademoiselle Dorothea!'"

Dorothea's eyes were wet when, a moment later, Narcissus came bustling
through the atrium with a roll of papers in his hand.

"Ah, this is luck!" he cried. "I was starting to search for you."

He either assumed that they had visited the tea-room or forgot all
about it; and M. Raoul's look implored Dorothea not to explain.

"Suppose we take the _triclinium_ first, on the north side of the
house. That, sir, will tell you whether I am right or wrong about the
climate of those days. A summer parlour facing north, and with no
trace of heating-flues! . . ."

He led off his captive, and Dorothea heard his expository tones gather
volume as the pair crossed the great hall beneath the dome. Then she
turned the handle of the library door, and was instantly deafened by
the babel within.

The guests took their departure a little before sunset. M. Raoul was
not among the long train which shook hands with her and filed down the
avenue at the heels of M. de Tocqueville and General Rochambeau.
Twenty minutes later, while the servants were setting the hall in
order, she heard her brother's voice beneath the window of her boudoir,
explaining the system on which the Romans warmed their houses.

She had picked up a religious book, but found herself unable to fix her
attention upon it or even to sit still. Her hand still burned where
M. Raoul's lips had touch