ent in her cheeks. She looked at him
half reproachfully, half indignantly.

"Acquaintances! You mean the people who come to see me! I hate them
all! Sometimes they amuse me a little, but that is all. They are
nothing!"

"And you have no women friends?"

"None! How should I! But I do not care. I do not like English-women!"

"But, Adrea, it is not good for you,--this isolation from your sex."

At the sound of her Christian name, coming from his lips so gently,
almost affectionately, she looked up quickly. It seemed to him
almost as though some softening change had crept over her. Was it the
firelight, he wondered, or was it fancy?

"Good for me!" she said softly. "Have you just thought of that,
Monsieur Paul?"

Again he felt that pang of conscience; and yet, was she not a little
unjust to him?

"You took your life into your own hands," he reminded her. "You chose
for yourself."

"Yes, yes!" she answered, drawing a little nearer to him, till her
head almost rested upon his knees. "I do not blame you."

"It would have been so easy before to have found a home for you," he
went on, "and now you have made it so difficult."

"There is no need," she interrupted proudly; "I could keep myself now.
I do not want anything from you, Monsieur Paul,--save one thing!"

She raised her face to his, and it seemed to him to be all aglow with
a wonderful, new light. There was no mistaking the soft entreaty of
those strange, dark eyes so close to his, or the tremor in his tones.
And then, before he could answer her, before he could summon up
resolution enough to draw away, she had stolen softly into his arms,
and, with a little murmur of content, had rested her small, dusky
head, with its coronet of dark, braided hair, upon his shoulder, and
twined her hands around his neck.

"Paul! Monsieur Paul! I am lonely and miserable. Love me just a
little, only a little!" she pleaded.

It was the supreme moment for both of them. To her, coveting this
love with all the passionate force of her fiery oriental nature, time
seemed to stand still while she rested passively in his arms, neither
altogether accepted nor altogether repulsed. And to him, as he sat
there pale and shaken, fighting fiercely against this great temptation
which threatened his self-respect, his liberty of body and soul, life
seemed to have turned into a grim farce, full of grotesque lights and
shadows, mocking and gibing at all which had seemed to him sweet and
pure