are the only person I am quite sure of."

He smiled, but not as if greatly elated. "That is because we are pals,"
he said.

"Yes, I know. It's good to have a pal who understands." Chris spoke a
little wistfully, but almost instantly dismissed the matter. "Why, I am
forgetting! You haven't seen Cinders yet, and I told him you were coming.
He is upstairs. Shall we go and find him?"

They went up together. Half-way up she slipped her hand into his, with a
soft little laugh. "It's like old times, Bertie. Don't break the spell,
_preux chevalier_. Let us pretend--just for to-night!"

They found Cinders imprisoned in a little sitting-room at the top of the
house which Chris shared with her cousin. His greeting of Bertrand was
effusive, even rapturous. Like his mistress, he never forgot a friend.

Afterwards they sat and talked of many things, chiefly connected with
Valpre. There was so much to remember--Mademoiselle Gautier and her
queer, conventual prejudices, Manon, the maid-of-all-work, and her funny
stories of the shore.

"She quite believed in the spell," Chris said. "She almost frightened me
with it."

"Without doubt there was a spell," said Bertrand gravely.

"You really think so? I never believed in it after that night."

"No?" he said. "And yet it was there."

Chris peered at him. "You talk as if it were something quite
substantial," she said.

"It was substantial," he made answer, and then with a sudden smile into
her wondering eyes: "As substantial, _cherie_, as my rope of sand that
was to make my work endure like--like the Sphinx and Cleopatra's Needle
and--and--" He broke off with his eloquent shrug, paused a moment,
then--"and--our friendship, if you will," he ended.

"Ah, fancy your remembering that!" she said. "But I believe you remember
everything."

"That is the spell," he said.

"Is it, Bertie? And do you remember the duel, and how you wouldn't tell
me what it was all about? Tell me now!" she begged, as a child pleading
for a story. "I always wanted to know."

But his face darkened instantly. "Not that, _petite_. He was bad. He was
_scelerat_. We will not speak of him."

"But, Bertie, I'm grown-up now. I'm quite old enough to know," she urged,
with a coaxing hand upon his arm.

He took the hand, turned it upwards, stroked the soft palm very
reverently. "I pray that you will never be old enough, Chris," he said,
and in the shaded lamplight she saw that his face had grown suddenly
melanc