herself from his grasp, she fled towards the house.

The scene had not lasted twenty seconds.

"Hang it!" snarled Philippe, though he was not in the habit of swearing.

His irritation was so great that, if the poor plaster goddess had not
already been reduced to fragments, he would certainly have flung her
from her pedestal. But, above all things, he was swayed by one idea: to
go away, not to see Suzanne again and to have done with this nonsense,
of which he felt all the hatefulness and absurdity.

He also quickly made his way back to the house. Unfortunately, knowing
no other outlet by which to escape, he went through the passage. The
dining-room door was open. He saw the girl sitting huddled in a chair,
with her head between her hands, sobbing.

He did not know how artificial a woman's tears can be. Nor did he know
the danger in those tears for him who is moved by the sight of their
flowing. But, had he known it, he would just the same have stayed; for
man's pity is infinite.

CHAPTER VII

EVE TRIUMPHANT

"There!" she said, after a few minutes. "The storm is over."

She raised her beautiful face, now lit with a smile:

"No black on my eye-lashes, you see," she added, gaily. "No rouge on my
lips.... Take note, please.... Nothing that comes off!"

This versatility of mood, the despair, which he had felt to be real,
followed by a light-heartedness which he felt to be equally sincere; all
this bewildered Philippe.

She began to laugh:

"Philippe! Philippe! You look as though you did not understand much
about women ... and even less about girls!"

She rose and went to the next room, which was her bedroom, as he saw by
the white curtains and the arrangement of the furniture; and she
returned with an album, in which she showed him, on the first page, the
photograph of a child, crying:

"Look, Philippe. I haven't changed. At two years old, just as now, I
used to have great big sorrows and eyes that flowed like taps."

He turned the pages of the album. There were portraits of Suzanne at all
ages: Suzanne as a child, Suzanne as a little girl, Suzanne as a young
girl; and each was more bewitching than the last.

At the bottom of one page, he read:

"_Suzanne, twenty._"

"Lord, how pretty you were!" he muttered, dazed by that image of beauty
and gladness.

And he looked at Suzanne, in spite of himself.

"I have grown older," she said. "Three long years...."

He shrugged his shoulders without r