grew rigid.

"What did I understand you to say, Monsieur?" with an unnatural quietness
which somewhat confused the marquis.

"I said that I never had a portrait of your mother. Is that explicit
enough? Yonder Rubens was my wife." The marquis spoke lightly. The
tone hid well the hot wrath which for the moment obliterated his sense of
truth and justice, two qualities the importance of which he had never
till now forgotten. He watched the effect of this terrible thrust, and
with monstrous satisfaction he saw the shiver which took his son in its
chilling grasp and sent him staggering back. "Then you return to Paris
to-morrow? . . . to be the Chevalier du Cevennes till the end? Ah well!"
How often man over-reaches himself in the gratification of an ignoble
revenge! "We all have our pastimes," went on the marquis, deepening the
abyss into which he was finally to fall. "You were mine. I had intended
to send you about some years ago; but I was lonely, and there was
something in your spirit which amused me. You tickled my fancy. But
now, I am weary; the pastime palls; you no longer amuse."

The Chevalier stood in the midst of chaos. He was experiencing that
frightful plunge of Icarus, from the clouds to the sea. He was falling,
falling. When one falls from a great height, when waters roll
thunderously over one's head, strange and significant fragments of life
pass and repass the vision. And at this moment there flashed across the
Chevalier's brain, indistinctly it is true, the young Jesuit's words,
spoken at the Silver Candlestick in Paris. . . . "An object of scorn,
contumely, and forgetfulness; to dream what might and should have been;
to be proved guilty of a crime we did not commit; to be laughed at!"
Spots of red blurred his sight; his nails sank into his palms; his breath
came painfully; there was a straining at the roots of his hair.

"Monsieur," he cried hoarsely, "take care! Are you not telling me some
dreadful lie?"

"It would be . . . . scarcely worth while." The marquis controlled his
agitation by gently patting the gold knob on his stick. His gaze
wandered, seeking to rest upon some object other than his son. The first
blinding heat of passion had subsided, and in the following haze he saw
that he had committed a wrong which a thousand truths might not wholly
efface. And yet he remained silent, obdurate: so little a thing as a
word or the lack of it has changed the destinies of empires and