tion. This is
a small game here. Leave us as you found us. We shall be the better for
it; our poor folk here will be the better. Proceed with this, and who
can tell what may happen? I was wrong, wrong--I see that now-to have
encouraged you at all. I repent of it. Here, as I talk to you, I feel,
with no doubt whatever, that the end of your bold exploit is near. Can
you not see that? Ah yes, you must, you must! Take my horses to-night,
leave here, and come back no more; and so none of us shall feel sorrow
in thinking of the time when Valmond came to Pontiac."

Variable, accusing, she had suddenly shown him something beyond caprice,
beyond accident of mood or temper. The true woman had spoken; all outer
modish garments had dropped away from her real nature, and showed its
abundant depth and sincerity. All that was roused in him this moment was
never known; he never could tell it; there were eternal spaces between
them. She had been speaking to him just now with no personal sentiment.
She was only the lover of honest things, the friend, the good ally,
obliged to flee a cause for its terrible unsoundness, yet trying to
prevent wreck and ruin.

He arose and turned his head away for an instant, her eloquence had been
so moving. His glance caught the picture of the Great Napoleon, and his
eyes met hers again with new resolution.

"I must stay," he answered; "I will not turn back, whatever comes. This
is but child's play, but a speck beside what I mean to do. True, I came
in the dark, but I will go in the light. I shall not leave them behind,
these poor folk; they shall come with me. I have money, France is
waiting, the people are sick of the Orleans, and I--"

"But you must, you must listen to me, monsieur!" she said desperately.

She came close to him, and, out of the frank eagerness of her nature,
laid her hand upon his arm, and looked him in the eyes with an almost
tender appealing.

At that moment the door opened, and Monsieur De la Riviere was
announced.

"Ah, madame!" said the young Seigneur in a tone more than a little
carbolic; "secrets of State, no doubt?"

"Statesmen need not commit themselves to newsmongers, monsieur," she
answered, still standing very near Valmond, as though she would continue
a familiar talk when the disagreeable interruption had passed.

She was thoroughly fearless, clear of heart, above all littlenesses.

"I had come to warn Monsieur Valmond once again, but I find him with his
ally, c