then
resumed his seat with eyes that looked deliberately ahead.

Could anything more completely have confirmed him in his conviction that
it was on M. de La Tour d'Azyr's account that Aline had come to plead
with him that morning? For what his eyes had seen, of course, was a lady
overcome with emotion at the sight of blood of her dear friend, and that
same dear friend restoring her with assurances that his hurt was very
far from mortal. Later, much later, he was to blame his own perverse
stupidity. Almost is he too severe in his self-condemnation. For how
else could he have interpreted the scene he beheld, his preconceptions
being what they were?

That which he had already been suspecting, he now accounted proven to
him. Aline had been wanting in candour on the subject of her feelings
towards M. de La Tour d'Azyr. It was, he supposed, a woman's way to be
secretive in such matters, and he must not blame her. Nor could he blame
her in his heart for having succumbed to the singular charm of such a
man as the Marquis--for not even his hostility could blind him to M. de
La Tour d'Azyr's attractions. That she had succumbed was betrayed, he
thought, by the weakness that had overtaken her upon seeing him wounded.

"My God!" he cried aloud. "What must she have suffered, then, if I had
killed him as I intended!"

If only she had used candour with him, she could so easily have won his
consent to the thing she asked. If only she had told him what now he
saw, that she loved M. de La Tour d'Azyr, instead of leaving him to
assume her only regard for the Marquis to be based on unworthy worldly
ambition, he would at once have yielded.

He fetched a sigh, and breathed a prayer for forgiveness to the shade of
Vilmorin.

"It is perhaps as well that my lunge went wide," he said.

"What do you mean?" wondered Le Chapelier.

"That in this business I must relinquish all hope of recommencing."

CHAPTER XII. THE OVERWHELMING REASON

M. de La Tour d'Azyr was seen no more in the Manege--or indeed in Paris
at all--throughout all the months that the National Assembly remained in
session to complete its work of providing France with a constitution.
After all, though the wound to his body had been comparatively slight,
the wound to such a pride as his had been all but mortal.

The rumour ran that he had emigrated. But that was only half the truth.
The whole of it was that he had joined that group of noble travellers
who came and