l and crisp
and vanish. He saw nothing in this action but a noble regret that she
had caused him pain. Nevertheless, all was not clear to him.

Silence.

"Well, Madame?"

"I . . . I have brought you another!" Redder than ever her face
flamed. The handkerchief was resolving itself into shreds.

"Another letter?" vaguely.

"No, no! Another . . . another answer!"

How still everything had suddenly grown to him! "Another answer? You
have brought me another answer?" Then the wine of life rushed through
his veins, and all darkness was gone. "Diane, Diane!" he cried,
springing toward her.

"Yes, yes; always call me that! Never call me Gabrielle!"

"And Victor?"

Her hands were against his breast and she was pushing him back. "Oh,
it is true that I loved him, as a woman would love a brave and gallant
brother." A strand of hair fell athwart her eyes and she brushed it
aside.

"But I?--I, whom you have made dance so sorrily?--but I?"

"To-night I saw you . . . I could see you," incoherently, "alone,
bereft of the friend you loved and who loved you. . . . I thought of
you as you faced them all that day! . . . How calm and brave you were!
. . . You said that some day you would force me to love you. You said
I was dishonest. I was, I was! But you could never force me to love
you, because . . . because. . . ." With a superb gesture of abandon
which swept aside all barriers, all hesitancies, all that hedging
convention which compels a woman to be silent, she said: "If you do not
immediately tell me that you still love me madly, I shall die of shame!"

"Diane!" He forced her hands from her burning face.

"Yes, yes; I love you, love you with all my soul; all, all! And I have
come to you this night in my shame, knowing that you would never have
come to me. Wait!" still pressing him back, for he was eager now to
make up in this exquisite moment all he had lost. "Oh, I tried to hate
you; lied to myself that I wanted nothing but to bring you to your
knees and then laugh at you. For each moment I have made you suffer I
have suffered an hour. Paul, Paul, can you love me still?"

He knelt, kissing her hands madly. "You are the breath of my life, the
coming of morning after a long night of darkness. Love you? With my
latest breath!"

"It was my heart you put your heel upon, for I loved you from the
moment I saw your miniature. Paul!" She bent her head till her cheek
rested upon his hair. "So m