what
matter? unhesitatingness was the warrior virtue of her desire. And for
herself the worst might happen if only she were borne along. Let her life
be torn and streaming like the flag of battle, it must be forward to the
end.

That was a quality of godless young heroism not unexhausted in
Beauchamp's blood. Reanimated by him, she awakened his imagination of the
vagrant splendours of existence and the rebel delights which have their
own laws and 'nature' for an applauding mother. Radiant Alps rose in his
eyes, and the morning born in the night suns that from mountain and
valley, over sea and desert, called on all earth to witness their death.
The magnificence of the contempt of humanity posed before him superbly
satanesque, grand as thunder among the crags and it was not a sensual cry
that summoned him from his pedlar labours, pack on back along the level
road, to live and breathe deep, gloriously mated: Renee kindled his
romantic spirit, and could strike the feeling into him that to be proud
of his possession of her was to conquer the fretful vanity to possess.
She was not a woman of wiles and lures.

Once or twice she consulted her watch: but as she professed to have no
hunger, Beauchamp's entreaty to her to stay prevailed, and the subtle
form of compliment to his knightly manliness in her remaining with him,
gave him a new sense of pleasure that hung round her companionable
conversation, deepening the meaning of the words, or sometimes
contrasting the sweet surface commonplace with the undercurrent of
strangeness in their hearts, and the reality of a tragic position. Her
musical volubility flowed to entrance and divert him, as it did.

Suddenly Beauchamp glanced upward.

Renee turned from a startled contemplation of his frown, and beheld Mrs.
Rosamund Culling in the room.

CHAPTER XLI

A LAME VICTORY

The intruder was not a person that had power to divide them; yet she came
between their hearts with a touch of steel.

'I am here in obedience to your commands in your telegram of this
evening,' Rosamund replied to Beauchamp's hard stare at her; she
courteously spoke French, and acquitted herself demurely of a bow to the
lady present.

Renee withdrew her serious eyes from Beauchamp. She rose and acknowledged
the bow.

'It is my first visit to England, madame!

'I could have desired, Madame la marquise, more agreeable weather for
you.'

'My friends in England will dispel the bad weather for me, m