enough to think well of me last night, M.
de Cocheforet. Why should the mention of Mademoiselle in a moment change
your opinion? I wish simply to speak to her. I have nothing to ask from
her, nothing to expect from her, either favour or anything else. What I
say she will doubtless tell you. CIEL man! what harm can I do to her, in
the road in your sight?'

He looked at me sullenly, his face still flushed, his eyes suspicious.

'What do you want to say to her?' he asked jealously. He was quite
unlike himself. His airy nonchalance, his careless gaiety were gone.

'You know what I do not want to say to her, M. de Cocheforet,' I
answered. 'That should be enough.'

He glowered at me a moment, still ill content. Then, without a word, he
made me a gesture to go to her.

She had halted a score of paces away; wondering, doubtless, what was
on foot. I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I missed the
expression of her face as I approached; but the manner in which she
turned her horse's head uncompromisingly towards her brother and looked
past me was full of meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under
me. I saluted her, trembling.

'Mademoiselle,' I said, 'will you grant me the privilege of your company
for a few minutes as we ride?'

'To what purpose?' she answered; surely, in the coldest voice in which a
woman ever spoke to a man.

'That I may explain to you a great many things you do not understand,' I
murmured.

'I prefer to be in the dark,' she replied. And her manner was more cruel
than her words.

'But, Mademoiselle,' I pleaded--I would not be discouraged--'you told me
one day, not so long ago, that you would never judge me hastily again.'

'Facts judge you, not I,' she answered icily. 'I am not sufficiently on
a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank God.'

I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we stood was
warm.

'Still, once before you thought the same,' I exclaimed after a pause,
'and afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may be so again,
Mademoiselle.'

'Impossible,' she said.

That stung me.

'No,' I cried. 'It is not impossible. It is you who are impossible. It
is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have done much in the last
three days to make things lighter for you, much to make things more
easy; now I ask you to do something in return which can cost you
nothing.'

'Nothing?' she answered slowly--and she looked at me; and her eyes and