deceive you. Perhaps, if I had not come back
here, I should in time--not at once, Madame,--have gone somewhere else,
where I could enjoy the only thing in life which had come to be worth
while living for. But it was you--you alone--that brought me back here,
to Lacville!"

"Why did you go straight to the Casino?" she faltered. "And why?--oh, why
did you risk all that money?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Because I am a fool!" he answered, bitterly--"a fool, and what the
English rightly call 'a dog in the manger!' I ought to rejoice when I
see you with that excellent fellow, Mr. Chester--and as your friend," he
stopped short and then ended his sentence with the words, "I ought to be
happy to know that you will have so excellent a husband!"

Sylvia also got up.

"You are quite mistaken," she said, coldly. "I shall never marry Mr.
Chester."

"I regret to hear you say that," said Count Paul, seriously. "A woman
should not live alone, especially a woman who is young and beautiful,
and--and who has money."

Sylvia shook her head. She was angry--more hurt and angry than she had
ever felt before in her life. She told herself passionately that the
Comte de Virieu was refusing that which had not been offered to him.

"You are very kind," she answered, lightly. "But I have managed very
well up to now, and I think I shall go on managing very well. You need
not trouble yourself about the matter, Count Paul. Mr. Chester and I
thoroughly understand one another--" She waited, and gently she added,
"I wish I could understand you--"

"I wish I understood myself," he said sombrely. "But there is one thing
that I believe myself incapable of doing. Whatever my feeling, nay,
whatever my love, for a woman, I would never do so infamous a thing as to
try and persuade her to join her life to mine. I know too well to what I
should be exposing her--to what possible misery, nay, to what probable
degradation! After all, a man is free to go to the devil alone--but he
has no right to drag a woman there with him!"

His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper, and he was gazing into Sylvia's
pale face with an anguished look of questioning and of pleading pain.

"I think that is true, Count Paul." Sylvia heard herself uttering gently,
composedly, the words which meant at once so much and so little to them
both. "It is a pity that all men do not feel about this as you do," she
concluded mechanically.

"I felt sure you would agree with me," he a