y answer! If she were compromised, all the more
ought he to have taken her in his arms and married her at once, instead
of quibbling and showing himself a prig.

Presently, her maid came in to tell them that a carriage was ready to
take them to the station, whence a train would start for Paris in a
quarter of an hour. Helene begged him, with a feeling that was
beginning to be one of shame. Lassalle repelled her in words that were
to stamp him with a peculiar kind of cowardice.

Why should he have stopped to think of anything except the beautiful
woman who was at his feet, and to whom he had pledged his love? What
did he care for the petty diplomat who was her father, or the
vulgar-tongued woman who was her mother? He should have hurried her and
the maid into the train for Paris, and have forgotten everything in the
world but his Helene, glorious among women, who had left everything for
him.

What was the sudden failure, the curious weakness, the paltriness of
spirit that came at the supreme moment into the heart of this hitherto
strong man? Here was the girl whom he loved, driven from her parents,
putting aside all question of appearances, and clinging to him with a
wild and glorious desire to give herself to him and to be all his own!
That was a thing worthy of a true woman. And he? He shrinks from her
and cowers and acts like a simpleton. His courage seems to have
dribbled through his finger-tips; he is no longer a man--he is a thing.

Out of all the multitude of Lassalle's former admirers, there is
scarcely one who has ventured to defend him, much less to laud him; and
when they have done so, their voices have had a sound of mockery that
dies away in their own throats.

Helene, on her side, had compromised herself, and even from the
view-point of her parents it was obvious that she ought to be married
immediately. Her father, however, confined her to her room until it was
understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then her family's
supplications, the statement that her sister's marriage and even her
father's position were in danger, led her to say that she would give up
Lassalle.

It mattered very little, in one way, for whatever he might have done,
Lassalle had killed, or at least had chilled, her love. His failure at
the moment of her great self-sacrifice had shown him to her as he
really was--no bold and gallant spirit, but a cringing, spiritless
self-seeker. She wrote him a formal letter to the effect that