ble
intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a
means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no
longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with,
like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be
our destroyer unless we levant."

Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even
at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more
than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where
the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false
wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks.
The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady
could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence
proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The
famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity
of a child, Cesarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never
could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large
sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their
presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his
inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very,
very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.

"Oh, how I love you," he said, bewildered and enthralled; "I love you
because you retain, after the finished graces of woman have come, the
naive traits of the guileless girl. What a joy that I divined your
excellences when you were so young and that I was favored by your
regard, and now am gladdened by your trustful smiles."

"I trust you so much that I could wish this money did not weigh on your
bosom. I love you without it, and I shall love you as long as you live."

Seeming to be as exalted as he, she grasped both his hands and drew his
face nearer and nearer hers to look him in the eyes.

"I do not ask anything of you but to be good to me. Do not reproach me
for leaving my lawful lord for you! If there is a fault in quitting him
who neglects me, never cast it upon me. Let us go! anywhere, if but you
are ever beside me, to protect, to support and cherish!"

Her moist eyes were as eloquent as her lips, and to have doubted her, he
must have doubted all evidence of his senses. And yet it was that same
hand on which he had impressed a score of burning kisses that wrot