e is no new thing. It is
merely the culmination of a long-drawn persecution..."

"Which you invited," she cut in. "Be just, monsieur."

"I hope that it is not in my nature to be otherwise, mademoiselle."

"Consider, then, that you killed his friend."

"I find in that nothing with which to reproach myself. My justification
lay in the circumstances--the subsequent events in this distracted
country surely confirm it."

"And..." She faltered a little, and looked away from him for the first
time. "And that you... that you... And what of Mademoiselle Binet, whom
he was to have married?"

He stared at her for a moment in sheer surprise. "Was to have married?"
he repeated incredulously, dismayed almost.

"You did not know that?"

"But how do you?"

"Did I not tell you that we are as brother and sister almost? I have his
confidence. He told me, before... before you made it impossible."

He looked away, chin in hand, his glance thoughtful, disturbed, almost
wistful.

"There is," he said slowly, musingly, "a singular fatality at work
between that man and me, bringing us ever each by turns athwart the
other's path..."

He sighed; then swung to face her again, speaking more briskly:
"Mademoiselle, until this moment I had no knowledge--no suspicion of
this thing. But..." He broke off, considered, and then shrugged. "If
I wronged him, I did so unconsciously. It would be unjust to blame me,
surely. In all our actions it must be the intention alone that counts."

"But does it make no difference?"

"None that I can discern, mademoiselle. It gives me no justification
to withdraw from that to which I am irrevocably committed. No
justification, indeed, could ever be greater than my concern for the
pain it must occasion my good friend, your uncle, and perhaps yourself,
mademoiselle."

She rose suddenly, squarely confronting him, desperate now, driven to
play the only card upon which she thought she might count.

"Monsieur," she said, "you did me the honour to-day to speak in certain
terms; to... to allude to certain hopes with which you honour me."

He looked at her almost in fear. In silence, not daring to speak, he
waited for her to continue.

"I... I... Will you please to understand, monsieur, that if you persist
in this matter, if... unless you can break this engagement of yours
to-morrow morning in the Bois, you are not to presume to mention this
subject to me again, or, indeed, ever again to approach me."

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