agardere answered her sadly enough, though he seemed to smile: "A girl's
love for a boy, a maid's love for a man. That pretty gentleman who was
here but now, and swore he adored you--if you were noble, could you love
such a man as he?"

Gabrielle began to laugh, as if all the agitations of the past instants
had been dissipated into nothingness by the jest of such a question. "I
swear to you, Henri," she said, softly, "that the man I could love would
not be at all like Monsieur de Chavernay."

In spite of himself, Lagardere gave a sigh of relief. It was something,
at least, to know whom Gabrielle de Nevers could not love. He essayed to
laugh, too.

"What would he be like," he asked--"the wonder whom you would consent to
love?"

He spoke very merrily, but it racked his heart to speak thus lightly of
the love of Gabrielle. He wished that he were a little boy again, that he
might hide behind some tree and cry out his grief in bitter tears. But
being, as he reminded himself, a weather-beaten soldier of fortune, it
was his duty to screen his misery with a grin and to salute his doom with
amusement. As for Gabrielle, she came a little nearer to Lagardere, and
her eyes were shining very brightly, and her lips trembled a little, and
she seemed a little pale in the clear air.

"I will try to paint you a picture," she said, hesitatingly, "of the man
I"--she paused for a second, and then continued, hurriedly--"of the man I
could love. He would be about your height, as I should think, to the very
littlest of an inch; and he would be built as you are built, Henri; and
his hair would be of your color, and his eyes would have your fire; and
his voice would have the sound of your voice, the sweetest sound in the
world; and the sweetest sound of that most sweet voice would be when it
whispered to me that it loved me."

Lagardere looked at her with haggard, happy eyes. He could not
misunderstand, and he was happy; he dared not understand, and he was
sad.

"Gabrielle," he said, softly, "when you were a little maid I used to tell
you tales to entertain you. Will you let me spin you a fable now?"

The girl said nothing; only she nodded, and she looked at him very
fixedly. Lagardere went on:

"There was once a man, a soldier of fortune, an adventurous rogue, into
whose hands a jesting destiny confided a great trust. That trust was the
life of a child, of a girl, of a woman, whom it was his glory to defend
for a while with his sword