radict himself
the next moment. "But no; the times are changing. Soon we shall be
equals all, as the good God made us, and--"

He paused, and smiled pensively. And as again the memory of her
yesternight's kindness rose before him, his smile broadened; it became
a laugh that went ringing down the glade, scaring a noisy thrush into
silence and sending it flying in affright across the scintillant waters
of the brook. Then that hearty laugh broke sharply off, as, behind
him, the sweetest voice in all the world demanded the reason of this
mad-sounding mirth.

La Boulaye's breath seemed in that instant to forsake him and he grew
paler than Nature and the writer's desk had fashioned him. Awkwardly he
turned and made her a deep bow.

"Mademoiselle! You--you see that you surprised me!" he faltered, like a
fool. For how should he, whose only comrades had been books, have
learnt to bear himself in the company of a woman, particularly when she
belonged to the ranks of those whom--despite Rousseau and his other
dear philosophers--he had been for years in the habit of accounting his
betters?

"Why, then, I am glad, Monsieur, that I surprised you in so gay a
humour--for, my faith, it is a rare enough thing."

"True, lady," said he foolishly, yet politely agreeing with her, "it is
a rare thing." And he sighed--"Helas!"

At that the laughter leapt from her young lips, and turned him hot and
cold as he stood awkwardly before her.

"I see that we shall have you sad at the thought of how rare is
happiness, you that but a moment back were--or so it seemed--so joyous.
Or is it that my coming has overcast the sky of your good humour?" she
demanded archly.

He blushed like a school-girl, and strenuously protested that it was not
so. In his haste he fell headlong into the sin of hastiness--as was but
natural--and said perhaps too much.

"Your coming, Mademoiselle?" he echoed. "Nay but even had I been sad,
your coming must have dispelled my melancholy as the coming of the sun
dispels the mist upon the mountains."

"A poet?" She mocked him playfully, with a toss of black curls and a
distracting glance of eyes blue as the heavens above them. "A poet,
Monsieur, and I never suspected it, for all that I held you a great
scholar. My father says you are."

"Are we not all poets at some season of our lives?" quoth he, for
growing accustomed to her presence--ravished by it, indeed--his courage
was returning fast and urging him beyond the l