n he
asked me. I liked him for what he had done."

Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively.
"I see. It was a kind of delicacy."

"Oh a 'kind'!" She desperately smiled.

He remained a little with his eyes on her face. "Was it for me?"

"Of course it was for you."

"Ah how strange you are!" he cried with tenderness. "Such
contradictions--on s'y perd. I wish you'd say that to THEM, that way.
Everything would be right."

"Never, never!" said the girl. "I've wronged them, and nothing will ever
be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe
the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn't seem to me
so bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to
them. You know best," she repeated.

"They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The
sense of desecration, of pollution, you see"--he explained as if for
conscience.

"Oh you needn't tell me--I saw them all there!" she answered.

"It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN'T brave them, did
you?"

"Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea's incredible!"
she then hopelessly sighed.

But he wouldn't have this. "No, no--I can imagine cases." He clearly had
SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it.

"But this isn't a case, hey?" she demanded. "Well then go back to
them--go back," she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across the
table to seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer,
pushed her chair back, springing up. "You know you didn't come here to
tell me you're ready to give them up."

"To give them up?" He only echoed it with all his woe at first. "I've
been battling with them till I'm ready to drop. You don't know how they
feel--how they MUST feel."

"Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour."

"It has made you--so extraordinarily!--more beautiful," said Gaston
Probert.

"I don't care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice."

"Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time--give me time, I'll manage
it. I only wish they hadn't seen you there in the Bois."

"In the Bois?"

"That Marguerite hadn't seen you--with that lying blackguard. That's the
image they can't get over."

Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself most
prepared for--so that she must speak accordingly. "I see you can't
either, Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That's all