holy, almost haggard. "The knowledge of evil is a poisonous thing.
Those who find it can never be young again."

His manner awed her a little. She did not pursue the point with her
customary persistence. "Well, tell me what happened afterwards," she
said. "He got well again?"

"Yes, _petite_."

"And--you forgave each other?"

"Never!" Bertrand raised his head and shot out the word with emphasis.

"Never, Bertie?" Chris looked at him, slightly startled.

He looked back at her, faintly smiling, but with the melancholy still in
his eyes. "Never," he repeated. "That shocks you, no?"

"Not really," she said loyally. "I'm sure he was horrid. He looked it.
Then--you are enemies still?"

"Enemies?" He shrugged his shoulders. "No, I think he would not consider
me as an enemy now."

"And yet you never forgave him?"

"No, never." Again his denial was emphatic. After a moment, seeing her
bewilderment, he proceeded to explain. "If he had apologized, if he had
retracted the insult, then it is possible that a reconciliation might
have been effected between us."

"But he didn't?" said Chris. "Then what happened? Did he do nothing at
all?"

"For a long time--nothing," said Bertrand.

"And then?"

"Then," very simply he made reply, "he ruined me."

"Bertie!" She gazed at him with tragedy dawning in her eyes. "He ruined
you! He!"

"He supplied the evidence against me," Bertrand said. "But it was clever.
He spread a net--so"--he flung out his hands with an explanatory
gesture--"a net that I see not nor suspect, and then when I am entrapped
he draw it close--close, and--I am a prisoner." He shut his teeth with a
click, and for an instant smiled--the smile of the man who fights with
his back against the wall.

But the tragedy had grown from shadow to reality in the turquoise blue
eyes of the girl beside him. "Oh, Bertie," she said, with a break in her
voice, "then it was all my fault--mine!"

He turned towards her swiftly. "No, no, no! Who has said that? It is not
true!" he declared, with vehemence.

"You said it yourself--almost," she told him. "And it is true, for if you
hadn't fought him it would never have happened. Oh, Bertie! I'm beginning
to think it was a dreadful pity I ever went to Valpre!"

He caught her hands and held them. "You shall not say it!" he declared
passionately. "You shall not think it! _Mignonne_, listen! Those days at
Valpre are to me the most precious, the most sacred, the most dear of my