loyalty."

"I feel that I am responsible for bringing her to Paris," Barrington
answered. "I would risk my life to carry her safely back to Beauvais."

Bruslart looked at him keenly for a moment, then held out his hand.

"Monsieur, I am ungenerous, if not in words in my thoughts. It is not to
be supposed that I should be the only man to be attracted by
Mademoiselle St. Clair, yet I am a little jealous. You have had an
opportunity of helping her that has not been given to me. You have been
able to prove yourself in her eyes; I have not. Has not my folly been
her ruin?"

"You have the opportunity now," said Barrington, whose hand was still
clasped in Lucien's.

"You do not understand my meaning."

"Only that we pledge ourselves to release mademoiselle."

"And the real strength underlying this resolve? Is it not that we both
love her?"

Barrington drew back a little, and felt the color tingle in his face.
Since the moment he had first seen her this woman had hardly been absent
from his thoughts, yet from the first he had known that she was pledged
to another man, and therefore she was sacred. Deep down in his nature,
set there perchance by some long-forgotten ancestor, cavalier in spirit,
yet with puritan tendencies in thought, there was a stronger sense of
right and wrong than is given to most men perhaps. As well might he
allow himself to love another's wife, as to think of love for another
man's promised wife. The standard of morality had been easy to keep,
since, until now, love for neither wife nor maid had tempted him; but
during the last two or three days the fierce testing fires had burned
within him. It had been easy to think evil of the man who stood before
him, easy to hope that there might be evil in him, so that Jeanne St.
Clair being free because of this evil, he might have the right to win
her if he could. Lucien Bruslart's quiet statement came like an
accusation; it showed him in a moment that in one sense at any rate he
had fallen before the temptation, for if he had not allowed himself to
think of love, he had yielded to the mean wish that her lover might
prove unworthy. It helped him also to rise superior to the temptation.

"I may have had ungenerous thoughts, too," he said, "but they have
gone."

"And only love remains," Bruslart returned, the slight rise in his tone
making the words a question rather than a statement.

"Your love, monsieur, my admiration and respect. These I certainly hav