looking straight before me as
I spoke, and dimly conscious that her glance was bent upon my
face--"before I go, I fain would thank you for all that you have done
for me here. Your care has saved my life, Mademoiselle; your kindness,
methinks, has saved my soul. For it seems to me that I am no longer the
same man whom Michelot fished out of the Loire that night two months
ago. I would thank you, Mademoiselle, for the happiness that has been
mine during the past few days--a happiness such as for years has not
fallen to my lot. To another and worthier man, the task of thanking you
might be an easy one; but to me, who know myself to be so far beneath
you, the obligation is so overwhelming that I know of no words to fitly
express it."

"Monsieur, Monsieur, I beseech you! Already you have said overmuch."

"Nay, Mademoiselle; not half enough."

"Have you forgotten, then, what you did for me? Our trivial service to
you is but unseemly recompense. What other man would have come to my
rescue as you came, with such odds against you--and forgetting the
affronting words wherewith that very day I had met your warning? Tell
me, Monsieur, who would have done that?"

"Why, any man who deemed himself a gentleman, and who possessed such
knowledge as I had."

She laughed a laugh of unbelief.

"You are mistaken, sir," she answered. "The deed was worthy of one of
those preux chevaliers we read of, and I have never known but one man
capable of accomplishing it."

Those words and the tone wherein they were uttered set my brain on fire.
I turned towards her; our glances met, and her eyes--those eyes that but
a while ago had never looked on me without avowing the disdain wherein
she had held me--were now filled with a light of kindliness, of
sympathy, of tenderness that seemed more than I could endure.

Already my hand was thrust into the bosom of my doublet, and my fingers
were about to drag forth that little shred of green velvet that I had
found in the coppice on the day of her abduction, and that I had kept
ever since as one keeps the relic of a departed saint. Another moment
and I should have poured out the story of the mad, hopeless passion that
filled my heart to bursting, when of a sudden--"Yvonne, Yvonne!" came
Genevieve's fresh voice from the other end of the terrace. The spell of
that moment was broken.

Methought Mademoiselle made a little gesture of impatience as she
answered her sister's call; then, with a word of apolo