ated, very much surprised, disturbed, disarmed by this
observation. Then he said slowly:

"But--I hardly know--I was tired, and then, to be candid, that imbecile
makes me nervous."

"Since when?"

"Always."

"Pardon me, I have heard you sing his praises. You liked him once. Be
quite sincere, Olivier."

He reflected a few moments; then, choosing his words, he said:

"Yes, it is possible that the great love I have for you makes me love
so much everything that belongs to you as to modify my opinion of that
bore, whom I might meet occasionally with indifference, but whom I
should not like to see in your house almost every day."

"My daughter's house will not be mine. But this is sufficient. I know
the uprightness of your heart. I know that you will reflect deeply
on what I have just said to you. When you have reflected you will
understand that I have pointed out a great danger to you, while yet
there is time to escape it. And you will beware. Now let us talk of
something else, will you?"

He did not insist, but he was much disturbed; he no longer knew what to
think, though indeed he had need for reflection. He went away after a
quarter of an hour of unimportant conversation.

CHAPTER IV

SWEET POISON

With slow steps, Olivier returned to his own house, troubled as if he
had just learned some shameful family secret. He tried to sound his
heart, to see clearly within himself, to read those intimate pages of
the inner book which seemed glued together, and which sometimes only
a strange hand can turn over by separating them. Certainly he did not
believe himself in love with Annette. The Countess, whose watchful
jealousy never slept, had foreseen this danger from afar, and had
signaled it before it even existed. But might that peril exist
to-morrow, the day after, in a month? It was the frank question that
he tried to answer sincerely. It was true that the child stirred his
instincts of tenderness, but these instincts in men are so numerous that
the dangerous ones should not be confounded with the inoffensive. Thus
he adored animals, especially cats, and could not see their silky fur
without being seized with an irresistible sensuous desire to caress
their soft, undulating backs and kiss their electric fur.

The attraction that impelled him toward this girl a little resembled
those obscure yet innocent desires that go to make up part of all the
ceaseless and unappeasable vibrations of human nerves. His eye of