e, the first sign of anger since he had
spilled his wine.

"Your successes, Bardelys, render you vain, and of vanity is presumption
born," he replied contemptuously.

"See!" I cried, appealing to the company. "Observe how he seeks to evade
replying! Nay, but you shall confess your clumsiness."

"A clumsiness," murmured La Fosse drowsily, "as signal as that which
attended Pan's wooing of the Queen of Lydia."

"I have no clumsiness to confess," he answered hotly, raising his voice.
"It is a fine thing to sit here in Paris, among the languid, dull, and
nerveless beauties of the Court, whose favours are easily won because
they look on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eager
for such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them.
But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is of a vastly different mettle. She
is a woman; not a doll. She is flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, and
vermilion. She has a heart and a will; not a spirit corrupted by vanity
and licence."

La Fosse burst into a laugh.

"Hark! O, hark!" he cried, "to the apostle of the chaste!"

"Saint Gris!" exclaimed another. "This good Chatellerault has lost both
heart and head to her."

Chatellerault glanced at the speaker with an eye in which anger
smouldered.

"You have said it," I agreed. "He has fallen her victim, and so his
vanity translates her into a compound of perfections. Does such a woman
as you have described exist, Comte? Bah! In a lover's mind, perhaps, or
in the pages of some crack-brained poet's fancies; but nowhere else in
this dull world of ours."

He made a gesture of impatience.

"You have been clumsy, Chatellerault," I insisted.

"You have lacked address. The woman does not live that is not to be won
by any man who sets his mind to do it, if only he be of her station and
have the means to maintain her in it or raise her to a better. A woman's
love, sir, is a tree whose root is vanity. Your attentions flatter her,
and predispose her to capitulate. Then, if you but wisely choose your
time to deliver the attack, and do so with the necessary adroitness--nor
is overmuch demanded--the battle is won with ease, and she surrenders.
Believe me, Chatellerault, I am a younger man than you by full five
years, yet in experience I am a generation older, and I talk of what I
know."

He sneered heavily. "If to have begun your career of dalliance at the
age of eighteen with an amour that resulted in a scandal be your ti