prodigal as you have been? Was he not dispossessed of his
duchy of Courlande, as you were of your--"

A gesture from Henri prevented her from finishing the sentence.

"Pardon me!" said she. "I had forgotten how painful to you is any
reference to that matter. We will speak only of your present renown, and
of the current of mutual sympathy that attracts each of us toward the
other. For myself, that attraction began on the fourteenth of last July.
You had just arrived at Paris, and a morning journal, in mentioning the
troops, and the names of the generals who appeared at the review,
related, apropos of your military exploits, many exciting details of your
escape during the war. Do you recall the applause that greeted you when
you marched past the tribunes? I saw you then for the first time, but I
should have known you among a thousand! The next day--"

"The next day," Henri interrupted, "it was my turn to applaud you. I had
been deprived a long time of the pleasures of the theatre, of which I am
very fond, and I began by going to the Comedie Francaise, where you
played, that night, the role of Helene in 'Mademoiselle de la Seigliere.'
Do you remember?"

"Do I remember! I recognized you instantly, sitting in the third row in
the orchestra."

"I had never seen you until then," Henri continued, "but that sympathetic
current was soon established, from the moment you appeared until the end
of the second piece. As it is my opinion that any officer is sufficiently
a gentleman to have the right to love a girl of noble birth, I fell
readily under the spell in which she whom you represented echoed my own
sentiments. Bernard Stamply also had just returned from captivity, and
the more enamored of you he became the more I pleased myself with
fancying my own personality an incarnation of his, with less presumption
than would be necessary for me to imagine myself the hero of which you
spoke a moment ago. After the play, a friend brought me here, presented
me to you--"

"And the sympathetic current did the rest!" added Eugenie Gontier,
looking at him tenderly. "Since then you have consecrated to me a part of
whatever time is at your disposal, and I assure you that I never have
been so happy, nor have felt so flattered, in my life."

"Second act!" came the voice of the call-boy from the corridor.

"Will you return here after the fourth act?" said the actress, rising. "I
shall wish to know how you find me in the great scene, and whe