ped that God
would afford me so great an opportunity of keeping it."

"You have not kept it yet," she warned him.

He smiled at her. "True!" he said. "But nine o'clock will soon be here.
Tell me," he asked her suddenly, "why did you not carry this request of
yours to M. de La Tour d'Azyr?"

"I did," she answered him, and flushed as she remembered her yesterday's
rejection. He interpreted the flush quite otherwise.

"And he?" he asked.

"M. de La Tour d'Azyr's obligations..." she was beginning: then she
broke off to answer shortly: "Oh, he refused."

"So, so. He must, of course, whatever it may have cost him. Yet in his
place I should have counted the cost as nothing. But men are different,
you see." He sighed. "Also in your place, had that been so, I think I
should have left the matter there. But then..."

"I don't understand you, Andre."

"I am not so very obscure. Not nearly so obscure as I can be. Turn it
over in your mind. It may help to comfort you presently." He consulted
his watch again. "Pray use this house as your own. I must be going."

Le Chapelier put his head in at the door.

"Forgive the intrusion. But we shall be late, Andre, unless you..."

"Coming," Andre answered him. "If you will await my return, Aline, you
will oblige me deeply. Particularly in view of your uncle's resolve."

She did not answer him. She was numbed. He took her silence for assent,
and, bowing, left her. Standing there she heard his steps going down the
stairs together with Le Chapelier's. He was speaking to his friend, and
his voice was calm and normal.

Oh, he was mad--blinded by self-confidence and vanity. As his carriage
rattled away, she sat down limply, with a sense of exhaustion and
nausea. She was sick and faint with horror. Andre-Louis was going to his
death. Conviction of it--an unreasoning conviction, the result, perhaps,
of all M. de Kercadiou's rantings--entered her soul. Awhile she sat thus,
paralyzed by hopelessness. Then she sprang up again, wringing her hands.
She must do something to avert this horror. But what could she do? To
follow him to the Bois and intervene there would be to make a scandal
for no purpose. The conventions of conduct were all against her,
offering a barrier that was not to be overstepped. Was there no one
could help her?

Standing there, half-frenzied by her helplessness, she caught again
a sound of vehicles and hooves on the cobbles of the street below.
A carriage was approachin