he forfeit of reputation, to the case, and reasonably
there was an arrangement to repay me out of the estate reserved for her,
so that the baroness should not be under the degradation of feeling
herself indebted. You will not think that out of the way: men of the
world do not. As for matters of the heart between us, we're as far apart
as the Poles.'

He spoke hurriedly. He had said all that could be expected of him.

They were in a wood, walking through lines of spruce firs of deep golden
green in the yellow beams. One of these trees among its well-robed
fellows fronting them was all lichen-smitten. From the low sweeping
branches touching earth to the plumed top, the tree was dead-black as its
shadow; a vision of blackness.

'I will compose a beautiful, dutiful, modest, oddest, beseeching,
screeching, mildish, childish epistle to her, and you shall read it, and
if you approve it, we shall despatch it,' said Clotilde.

'There speaks my gold-crested serpent at her wisest!' replied Alvan. 'And
now for my visit to your family: I follow you in a day. En avant! contre
les canons! A run to Lake Leman brings us to them in the afternoon. I
shall see you in the evening. So our separation won't be for long this
time. All the auspices are good. We shall not be rich--nor poor.'

Clotilde reminded him that a portion of money would be brought to the
store by her.

'We don't count it,' said he. 'Not rich, certainly. And you will not
expect me to make money by my pen. Above all things I detest the writing
for money. Fiction and verse appeal to a besotted public, that judges of
the merit of the work by the standard of its taste: avaunt! And
journalism for money is Egyptian bondage. No slavery is comparable to the
chains of hired journalism. My pen is my fountain--the key of me; and I
give my self, I do not sell. I write when I have matter in me and in the
direction it presses for, otherwise not one word!'

'I would never ask you to sell yourself,' said Clotilde. 'I would rather
be in want of common comforts.'

He squeezed her wrist. They were again in front of the black-draped
blighted tree. It was the sole tree of the host clad thus in scurf
bearing a semblance of livid metal. They looked at it as having seen it
before, and passed on.

'But the wife of Sigismund Alvan will not be poor in renown!' he resumed,
radiating his full bloom on her.

'My highest ambition is to be Sigismund Alvan's wife!' she exclaimed.

To hear her