nvent again. No man
in the world ever remained satisfied with his first gun."

"I beg of you, monsieur," cried Mlle. Moiseney, "could you not speak to
the Minister of War about adopting the Larinski musket?"

"Are you your country's enemy?" he asked. "Do you wish its destruction?
Have you sworn that after Alsace we must lose Champagne?"

"I am perfectly sure," she replied, mounting on her high horse, "that
the Larinski musket is a _chef-d'oeuvre_, and I would pledge my life
that he who invented it is a man of genius."

"If you would pledge your word of honour to that, mademoiselle," he
replied, making her a profound bow, "you may well feel assured that the
French Government would not hesitate a moment."

Mlle. Moriaz took no part in this conversation. Her face slightly
contracted, buried in her thoughts as in a solitude inaccessible to
earthly sounds, her cheek resting in the palm of her left hand, she held
in her right hand a paper-cutter, and she kept pricking the point into
one of the grooves of the table on which her elbow rested, while her
half-closed eyes were fixed on a knot of the mahogany. She saw in this
knot the Isthmus of Panama, San Francisco, the angelic countenance of
the beautiful Polish woman who had given birth to Count Abel Larinski;
she saw there also fields of snow, ambuscades, retreats more glorious
than victories, and, beyond all else, the bursting of a gun and of a
man's heart.

She arose, and saluted her father without a word. In crossing the
_salon_ she perceived that M. Larinski had forgotten a book he had left
on the piano when he came in. She opened the volume; he had written
his name on the top of the first page, and Antoinette recognised the
handwriting of the note.

Shut up in her own room, while taking down and combing her hair, her
imagination long wandered through California and Poland. She compared
M. Larinski with all the other men she ever had known, and she concluded
that he resembled none of them. And it was he who had written: "I
arrived in this village disgusted with life, sorrowful and so weary
that I longed to die. I saw you pass by, and I know not what mysterious
virtue entered into me. I will live."

It seemed to her that for long years she had been seeking some one, and
that she had done well to come to the Engadine, because here she had
found the object of her search.

CHAPTER III

Two, three, four days passed without Count Larinski reappearing at
the Hote