disinterestedness of the woman who tries to rise above her past. No
wonder she had been sick with fear on meeting him! It was in his power
to do her more harm than he had dreamed...

Assuredly he did not want to harm her; but he did desperately want to
prevent her marrying Owen Leath. He tried to get away from the feeling,
to isolate and exteriorize it sufficiently to see what motives it
was made of; but it remained a mere blind motion of his blood, the
instinctive recoil from the thing that no amount of arguing can make
"straight." His tramp, prolonged as it was, carried him no nearer
to enlightenment; and after trudging through two or three sallow
mud-stained villages he turned about and wearily made his way back to
Givre. As he walked up the black avenue, making for the lights that
twinkled through its pitching branches, he had a sudden realisation
of his utter helplessness. He might think and combine as he would; but
there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do...

He dropped his wet coat in the vestibule and began to mount the stairs
to his room. But on the landing he was overtaken by a sober-faced maid
who, in tones discreetly lowered, begged him to be so kind as to step,
for a moment, into the Marquise's sitting-room. Somewhat disconcerted
by the summons, he followed its bearer to the door at which, a couple of
hours earlier, he had taken leave of Mrs. Leath. It opened to admit him
to a large lamp-lit room which he immediately perceived to be empty; and
the fact gave him time to note, even through his disturbance of mind,
the interesting degree to which Madame de Chantelle's apartment "dated"
and completed her. Its looped and corded curtains, its purple satin
upholstery, the Sevres jardinieres, the rosewood fire-screen, the little
velvet tables edged with lace and crowded with silver knick-knacks and
simpering miniatures, reconstituted an almost perfect setting for the
blonde beauty of the 'sixties. Darrow wondered that Fraser Leath's
filial respect should have prevailed over his aesthetic scruples to the
extent of permitting such an anachronism among the eighteenth century
graces of Givre; but a moment's reflection made it clear that, to its
late owner, the attitude would have seemed exactly in the traditions of
the place.

Madame de Chantelle's emergence from an inner room snatched Darrow from
these irrelevant musings. She was already beaded and bugled for the
evening, and, save for a slight pinkne