one and jumped
to this conclusion out of sheer conceit--misreading all I see in your
eyes--translating all wrongly what I hear in your silence--you'll
have to forgive me. I'm not trying to rush you into any expression
of what you feel." He conscientiously thought he was not. "In fact,
to tell you the honest truth, to me it seems that you--bringing back
this bangle--holding from me your reason in doing so; you, stumbling
over everything you say, and looking at me as you have done in the
last few moments--that it's you who have dragged these things out
of me. All my attitude has been in trying to avoid them, because of
what I thought you expected me to be. And now I think differently.
Am I right? Am I?" He turned her face to meet his eyes. "Am I?"

She raised her eyes once--let his take them--hold them--keep them.
Then the boards of the scaffold slipped away from under her feet--one
instant the sensation of dropping--dropping; then oblivion--the
noose of Fate drawn tight--the account reckoned. She swayed into his
arms and he held her--kissing her hair, kissing her shoulders, her
cheeks, her eyes--then, gently putting his hand beneath her chin,
he lifted her face upwards, and crushed her lips against her teeth
with kisses.

END OF BOOK I

BOOK II

THE DESERTER

CHAPTER I

Apsley Manor was one of those residences to be found scattered over
the country, which are vaguely described as Tudor--memorials to the
cultured taste in England, before the restoration with its sponge
of Puritanical Piety wiped out the last traces of that refinement
which Normandy had lent. Britain was destined to be great in commerce,
and not even the inoculation of half the blood of France could ever
make her people great in art as well.

It would be difficult to say the exact date when Apsley Manor was
built. Certain it was that Elizabeth, in one of her progresses--the
resort of a clever woman to fill a needy purse--had stayed there on
her way to Oxford. The room, the bed even in which she was supposed
to have slept, still remain there. Each owner, as he parted with the
property, exacted a heavy premium upon that doubtful relic of history.
None of them wished to remove it from the room where it had so many
romantic associations; but they one and all had used it as a lever
to raise the price of the property--if only a hundred pounds--beyond
that which they had, in the first case, paid for it themselves. Once,
in fact, the han