great world you have inhabited at Paris and elsewhere.
I can understand that at Lavedan you should find little of interest,
and--and that your inactivity should render you impatient to be gone."

"If there were so little to interest me then it might be as you say.
But, oh, mademoiselle--" I ceased abruptly. Fool! I had almost fallen a
prey to the seductions that the time afforded me. The balmy, languorous
eventide, the broad, smooth river down which we glided, the foliage,
the shadows on the water, her presence, and our isolation amid such
surroundings, had almost blotted out the matter of the wager and of my
duplicity.

She laughed a little nervous laugh, and--maybe to ease the tension
that my sudden silence had begotten--"You see," she said, "how your
imagination deserts you when you seek to draw upon it for proof of what
you protest. You were about to tell me of--of the interests that hold
you at Lavedan, and when you come to ponder them, you find that you
can think of nothing. Is it--is it not so?" She put the question very
timidly, as if half afraid of the answer she might provoke.

"No; it is not so," I said.

I paused a moment, and in that moment I wrestled with myself. Confession
and avowal--confession of what I had undertaken, and avowal of the love
that had so unexpectedly come to me--trembled upon my lips, to be driven
shuddering away in fear.

Have I not said that this Bardelys was become a coward? Then my
cowardice suggested a course to me--flight. I would leave Lavedan. I
would return to Paris and to Chatellerault, owning defeat and paying my
wager. It was the only course open to me. My honour, so tardily aroused,
demanded no less. Yet, not so much because of that as because it was
suddenly revealed to me as the easier course, did I determine to pursue
it. What thereafter might become of me I did not know, nor in that hour
of my heart's agony did it seem to matter overmuch.

"There is much, mademoiselle, much, indeed, to hold me firmly at
Lavedan," I pursued at last. "But my--my obligations demand of me that I
depart."

"You mean the Cause," she cried. "But, believe me, you can do nothing.
To sacrifice yourself cannot profit it. Infinitely better you can serve
the Duke by waiting until the time is ripe for another blow. And how
can you better preserve your life than by remaining at Lavedan until the
persecutions are at an end?"

"I was not thinking of the Cause, mademoiselle, but of myself alone--