--I beg for more than life--that your are not averse... that you
support me?'

His failing breath softened the bluntness.

She replied, 'I would not have him ever break an engagement binding his
honour.'

'You stretch the point of honour.'

'It is our way. Dear friend, we are French. And I presume to think that
our French system is not always wrong, for if my father had not broken
it by treating you as one of us and leaving me with you, should I have
heard...?'

'I have displeased you.'

'Do not suppose that. But, I mean, a mother would not have left me.'

'You wished to avoid it.'

'Do not blame me. I had some instinct; you were very pale.'

'You knew I loved you.'

'No.'

'Yes; for this morning...'

This morning it seemed to me, and I regretted my fancy, that you were
inclined to trifle, as, they say, young men do.'

'With Renee?'

'With your friend Renee. And those are the hills of Petrarch's tomb?
They are mountains.'

They were purple beneath a large brooding cloud that hung against the
sun, waiting for him to enfold him, and Nevil thought that a tomb there
would be a welcome end, if he might lift Renee in one wild flight over
the chasm gaping for her. He had no language for thoughts of such a
kind, only tumultuous feeling.

She was immoveable, in perfect armour.

He said despairingly, 'Can you have realized what you are consenting
to?'

She answered, 'It is my duty.'

'Your duty! it's like taking up a dice-box, and flinging once, to
certain ruin!'

'I must oppose my father to you, friend. Do you not understand duty to
parents? They say the English are full of the idea of duty.'

'Duty to country, duty to oaths and obligations; but with us the heart
is free to choose.'

'Free to choose, and when it is most ignorant?'

'The heart? ask it. Nothing is surer.'

'That is not what we are taught. We are taught that the heart deceives
itself. The heart throws your dicebox; not prudent parents.'

She talked like a woman, to plead the cause of her obedience as a girl,
and now silenced in the same manner that she had previously excited him.

'Then you are lost to me,' he said.

They saw the gondola returning.

'How swiftly it comes home; it loitered when it went,' said Renee.
'There sits my father, brimming with his picture; he has seen one more!
We will congratulate him. This little boulevard is not much to speak of.
The hills are lovely. Friend,' she dropped her voice on the gondola's