elbow. "Oh, well, hang the world, Helen! It's easy enough for me to say
so, I dare say, being but so slightly acquainted with it and the ways
of it. But the world can't be so wholly hide-bound and idiotic that it
denies the existence of exceptional cases. And this case, in some of
its bearings at all events, is wholly exceptional, I am--happy to
think."

"You are a very convincing special pleader, Richard," Madame de
Vallorbes said softly.

"Then you accept?" he rejoined exultantly. "You accept?"

The young lady could not quite control herself.

"Ah! if you only knew the prodigious relief it would be," she
exclaimed, with an outbreak of impatience. "It would make an
incalculable difference. And yet I do not see my way. I am in a cleft
stick. I dare not say Yes. And to say No----" Her sincerity was
unimpeachable at that moment. Her eyes actually filled with tears.
"Pah! I am ashamed of myself," she cried, "but to refuse is
distracting."

The gate of the outer park had been reached. The groom swung himself
down and ran forward, but confused by the growing darkness and the
thick atmosphere he fumbled for a time before finding the heavy latch.
The horses became somewhat restive, snorting and fidgeting.

"Steady there, steady, good lass," Richard said soothingly. Then he
turned again to his companion. "Believe me it's the very easiest thing
out to accept, if you'll only look at it all from the right point of
view, Helen."

Madame de Vallorbes withdrew her right hand from her muff and laid it,
almost timidly, upon the young man's arm.

"Do you know, you are wonderfully dear to me, Dick?" she said, and her
voice shook slightly. She was genuinely touched and moved. "No one has
ever been quite so dear to me before. It is a new experience. It takes
my breath away a little. It makes me regret some things I have done.
But it is a mistake to go back on what is past, don't you think so?
Therefore we will go forward. Tell me, expound. What is this so
agreeably reconciling point of view?"

But along with the touch of her hand, a great wave of emotion swept
over poor Richard, making his grasp on the reins very unsteady. The
sensations he had suffered last evening in the Long Gallery again
assailed him. The flesh had its word to say. Speech became difficult.
Meanwhile his agitation communicated itself strangely to the horses.
They sprang forward against that all-encircling, ever-present, yet
ever-receding, blank wall of fog,