o. Come!"

She obeyed, and gave him her hands, standing beside his chair. But her
face was still absorbed.

"To be free," she said, under her breath--"free, like my parents, from
all these petty struggles and conventions!"

Then she felt his kisses on her hands, and her expression changed.

"How we cheat ourselves with words!" she whispered, trembling, and,
withdrawing one hand, she smoothed back the light-brown curls from his
brow with that protecting tenderness which had always entered into her
love for him. "To-night we are here--together--this one last night! And
to-morrow, at this time, you'll be in Paris; perhaps you'll be looking
out at the lights--and the crowds on the Boulevard--and the
chestnut-trees. They'll just be in their first leaf--I know so
well!--and the little thin leaves will be shining so green under the
lamps--and I shall be here--and it will be all over and done
with--forever. What will it matter whether I am free or not free? I
shall be _alone_! That's all a woman knows."

Her voice died away. Warkworth rose. He put his arms round her, and she
did not resist.

"Julie," he said in her ear, "why should you be alone?"

A silence fell between them.

"I--I don't understand," she said, at last.

"Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business can be
perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after to-morrow? What
harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We understand life. And who
would have any right to blame or to meddle? Julie, I know a little inn
in the valley of the Bievre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field.
No English tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two--but this
is not the time of year. Julie, why shouldn't we spend our last two days
there--together--away from all the world, before we say good-bye? You've
been afraid here of prying people--of the Duchess even--of Madame
Bornier--how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn't we sweep all that
away--and be happy! Nobody should ever--nobody _could_ ever know." His
voice dropped, became still more hurried and soft. "We might go as
brother and sister--that would be quite simple. You are practically
French. I speak French well. Who is to have an idea, a suspicion of our
identity? The spring there is mild and warm. The Bois de Verrieres close
by is full of flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we
went once, to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away.
But I knew this