gether as best she could from his hurried,
excited talk--from stories half told, fierce charges against
'charlatans' and 'intriguers,' mingled with half-serious, half-comic
returns upon himself, attacks on all the world, alternating with a
ruthless self-analysis--the talk of a man who challenges society
one moment with an angry '_J'accuse!_'--and sees himself the
next--sardonically--as the chief obstacle in his own way.

Then suddenly a note of intense loneliness--anguish--inexplicable
despair. Eugenie could not stop it, could not withdraw herself.
There was a strange feeling that it brought her the answer to her
prayer.--They hurried on through the lower walks of the Park--plunging
now through tunnelled depths of shade, and now emerging into spaces
where sunset and moonrise rained a mingled influence on glimmering
water, on the dim upturned faces of Ceres or Flora, or the limbs
of flower-crowned nymphs and mermaids. It seemed impossible to turn
homeward, to break off their conversation. When they reached the
'Bassin de Neptune' they left the Park, turning down the Trianon
Avenue, in the growing dark, till they saw to their right, behind its
iron gates, the gleaming facade of the Petit Trianon; woods all about
them, and to their left, again, the shimmer of wide water. Meanwhile
the dying leaves, driven by the evening wind, descended on them in
a soft and ceaseless shower; the woods, so significant and human in
their planned and formal beauty, brought their 'visionary majesties'
of moonlight and of gloom to bear on nerve and sense, turned all that
was said and all that was felt, beneath their spell, to poetry.

Suddenly, at the Trianon gate, Eugenie stopped.

'I'm very tired,' she said, faintly. 'I am afraid we must go back.'

Fenwick denounced himself for a selfish brute; and they turned
homeward. But it was not physical fatigue she felt. It was rather the
burden of a soul thrown headlong upon hers--the sudden appeal of a
task which seemed to be given her by God--for the bridling of her own
heart, and the comforting and restoring of John Fenwick. From all
the conflicting emotion of an evening which changed her life, what
remained--or seemed to remain--was a missionary call of duty and
affection. 'Save him!--and master thyself!'

So, yet again, poor Eugenie slipped into the snare which Fate had set
for one who was only too much a woman.

The Rue des Reservoirs was very empty as Fenwick and Madame de
Pastourelles