in her veins. It permeated her being and filled her heart with
warm desires.

This feeling had been stealing upon her so gradually and insidiously
that she had never realized it until this moment,--the moment when it
had taken full possession of her soul.

"I love him! I love him!" she repeated to herself. "I have struggled
against it,--I have denied it. I did not want to do it,--it is misery!
But I can't help it,--I love him! I, Fouchette, the spy, who would
have betrayed him, who wronged him, who thought love impossible!"

She did not try to deceive herself. She knew that at this moment, when
her heart was so full of him, he was thinking of another woman,--a
beautiful and pure being that was worthy of his love,--that he had
forgotten her very existence. She had not the remotest idea of trying
to attract that love to herself. She did not even indulge in the
pardonable girlish dreams in which "If" is the principal character.

He was as impossible to her as the pyramids of Egypt. Therefore she
was frightened.

"Mon Dieu! but I surely do love him!" She communed with her poor
little bursting heart. "And it is beautiful to love!" She sighed
deeply.

"Mademoiselle!"

She started visibly, as if he had read her thoughts as well as heard
her sigh, and felt the hot blood mantle her neck again,--for the
second time within her memory.

"Pardon! mademoiselle," he said, gently, "I forgot. I was
thinking----"

"Of her? Yes,--I know. It is--how you startled me!"

There was a perceptible chord of sympathy in her voice, and he moved
his chair around to hers and made as if he would take her hand in the
usual way. But to his surprise she rose and, seating herself on a low
divan some distance from him, leaned her elbows on her knees and
rested her downcast face between her hands. She could not bear to have
him touch her.

"Mon enfant! Mon amie!" he remonstrated, in a grieved tone.

"Bah! it is nothing," she murmured; "and nothing magnified is still
nothing."

There was that in her voice which touched a heart surcharged with
tenderness. He came over and stood beside her.

"I was thinking----"

"Of her,--yes,--I understand----"

"And I lose myself in my love," he added.

"Yes; love! Oui da!"

She laughed a little hysterically and shrugged the thin shoulders
without changing her position.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, pityingly, "you do not know what love is!"

"Me? No! Why should I?"

She never once looked up at him. She