He questioned her in
guarded terms, but with a close, searching, embarrassing persistency. He
asked her how the liaison began, if it was long or short, tranquil or
troubled, under what circumstances it was broken off. And his enquiries
came back again and again to the means the fellow had used to cajole
her, as if these must surely have been extraordinary and unheard of. But
all his cross-examination was in vain. She kept her own counsel with a
gentle, deprecatory obstinacy, her lips tightly pressed together and
tears welling in her eyes.

Presently, however, Evariste having asked where the man was now, she
told him:

"He has left the Kingdom--France, I mean," she corrected herself in an
instant.

"An _emigre_!" ejaculated Gamelin.

She looked at him, speechless, at once reassured and disheartened to see
him create in his own mind a truth in accordance with his political
passions and of his own motion give his jealousy a Jacobin complexion.

In actual fact Elodie's lover was a little lawyer's clerk, a very pretty
lad, half Adonis, half guttersnipe, whom she had adored and the thought
of whom, though three years had gone by since, still thrilled her
nerves. Rich old women were his particular game, and he deserted Elodie
for a woman of the world of a certain age who could and did recompense
his merits. Having, after the abolition of offices, attained a post in
the Mairie of Paris, he was now a _sansculotte_ dragoon and the
hanger-on of a _ci-devant_ Countess.

"A noble! an _emigre_!" muttered Gamelin, whom she took good care not to
undeceive, never having been desirous he should know the whole truth.
"And he deserted you like a dastard?"

She nodded in answer. He clasped her to his heart:

"Dear victim of the vile corruption of monarchies, my love shall avenge
his villainy! Heaven grant, I may meet the scoundrel! I shall not fail
to know him!"

She turned away, at one and the same time saddened and smiling,--and
disappointed. She would fain have had him wiser in the lore of love,
with more of the natural man about him, more perhaps even of the brute.
She felt he forgave so readily only because his imagination was cold and
the secret she had revealed awoke in him none of the mental pictures
that torture sensuous natures,--in a word, that he saw her seduction
solely under a moral and social aspect.

They had risen, and while they walked up and down the shady avenues of
the gardens, he informed her that he only