sit down?" he now said, motioning her to a chair politely,
and taking one himself, thus pausing before he answered her.

I was prepared to see him keep a decorous distance from her. I felt he
was acting upon deliberation; that he was trusting to the power of his
insinuating address, his sophistry, to break down barriers. It was as
if he felt himself at greater advantage, making no emotional
demonstrations, so allaying her fears, giving her time to think; for it
was clear he hoped to master her intelligence, so strong a part of her.

She sat down in the high-backed chair, and I noted that our batteries
began to play upon the town--an unusual thing at night. It gave me a
strange feeling--the perfect stillness of the holy place, the quiet
movement of this tragedy before me, on which broke, with no modifying
noises or turmoil, the shouting cannonade. Nature, too, it would have
seemed, had forged a mood in keeping with the time, for there was no
air stirring when we came in, and a strange stillness had come upon the
landscape. In the pause, too, I heard a long, soft shuffling of feet in
the corridor--the evening procession from the chapel--and a slow chant:

"I am set down in a wilderness, O Lord, I am alone. If a strange voice
call, O teach me what to say; if I languish, O give me Thy cup to drink;
O strengthen Thou my soul. Lord, I am like a sparrow far from home; O
bring me to Thine honourable house. Preserve my heart, encourage me,
according to Thy truth."

The words came to us distinctly yet distantly, swelled softly, and
died away, leaving Alixe and Doltaire seated and looking at each other.
Alixe's hands were clasped in her lap.

"Your honour is above all price," he said at last in reply to her.
"But what is honour in this case of yours, in which I throw the whole
interest of my life, stake all? For I am convinced that, losing, the
book of fate will close for me. Winning, I shall begin again, and play a
part in France which men shall speak of when I am done with all. I never
had ambition for myself; for you, Alixe Duvarney, a new spirit lives in
me.... I will be honest with you. At first I swore to cool my hot face
in your bosom; and I would have done that at any price, and yet I would
have stood by that same dishonour honourably to the end. Never in my
whole life did I put my whole heart in any--episode--of admiration: I
own it, for you to think what you will. There never was a woman whom,
loving to-day,"--he smi