vous, hasty glance.

"You are alone, Paul?"

"Alone?" cried the Chevalier, astonished as much by the question as by
Victor's appearance. "Yes. Why not? . . . What have you been doing
with that sword?" suddenly.

"Nothing, nothing!" with energy. Victor sheathed the weapon. "A woman
entered here by mistake . . . ?"

"She is gone," indifferently. "She was a lady of quality, for I could
see that the odor of wine and the disorder of the room were distasteful
to her."

"She left . . . wearing her mask?" asked the poet, looking everywhere
but at the Chevalier, who was growing curious.

"Yes. Her figure was charming. That blockhead of a host! . . . to
have shown her in here!"

"She was in distress?"

"Evidently. In the old days I should have striven to console. What is
it all about, lad? Your hand trembles. Do you know her?"

"I know something of her history," with half a truth. Victor's
forehead was cold and dry to the touch of his hand.

"She is in trouble?"

"Yes."

The Chevalier arranged a log on the irons. "Whither is she bound?"

"Spain."

"Ah! A matter of careless politics, doubtless."

"Good!" thought the poet. "He does not ask her name."

"Has she a pleasant voice? I spoke to her, but she remained dumb.
Spain," ruminating. "For me, New France. Lad, the thought of reaching
that far country is inspiriting. I shall mope a while; but there is
metal in me which needs but proper molding. . . . For what purpose had
you drawn your sword?"

"I challenged the vicomte, and he refused to fight."

"On my account?" sternly. "You did wrong."

"I can not change the heat of my blood," carelessly.

"No; but you can lose it, and at present it is very precious to me. He
refused? The vicomte has sound judgment."

"Oh, he and I shall be killing each other one of these fine days; but
not wholly on your account, Paul," gloom wrinkling his brow, as if the
enlightening finger of prescience had touched it. "It is fully one
o'clock; you will be wanting sleep."

"Sleep?" The ironist twisted his mouth. "It will be many a day ere
sleep makes contest with my eyes . . . unless it be cold and sinister
sleep. Sleep? You are laughing! Only the fatuous and the
self-satisfied sleep . . . and the dead. So be it." He took the tongs
and stirred the log, from which flames suddenly darted. "I wonder what
they are doing at Voisin's to-night?" irrelevantly. "There will be
some from the guards, some f