grandfather say to you?" she asked, after a silence.

Ste. Marie looked away.

"I cannot tell you," he said. "He--was not quite sympathetic."

The girl gave a little cry.

"Tell me what he said!" she demanded. "I must know what he said."

The man's eyes pleaded with her, but she held him with her gaze, and in
the end he gave in.

"He said I was a damned fool," said Ste. Marie.

And the girl, after an instant of staring, broke into a little fit of
nervous, overwrought laughter, and covered her face with her hands.

He threw himself upon his knees before her, and her laughter died away.
An Englishman or an American cannot do that. Richard Hartley, for
example, would have looked like an idiot upon his knees, and he would
have felt it. But it did not seem extravagant with Ste. Marie. It became
him.

"Listen! Listen!" he cried to her, but the girl checked him before he
could go on.

She dropped her hands from her face, and she bent a little forward over
the man as he knelt there. She put out her hands and took his head for a
swift instant between them, looking down into his eyes. At the touch a
sudden wave of tenderness swept her--almost an engulfing wave; it almost
overwhelmed her and bore her away from the land she knew. And so when
she spoke her voice was not quite steady. She said:

"Ah, dear Ste. Marie! I cannot pretend to be cold toward you. You have
laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie. You enchant us all, somehow, don't
you? I suppose I'm not so different from the others as I thought I was.
And yet," she said, "he was right, you know. My grandfather was right.
No, let me talk, now. I must talk for a little. I must try to tell you
how it is with me--try somehow to find a way. He was right. He meant
that you and I were utterly unsuited to each other, and so, in calm
moments, I know we are. I know that well enough. When you're not with
me, I feel very sure about it. I think of a thousand excellent reasons
why you and I ought to be no more to each other than friends. Do you
know, I think my grandfather is a little uncanny. I think he has
prophetic powers. They say very old people often have. He and I talked
about you when I came home from that dinner-party at the De Saulnes', a
month ago--the dinner-party where you and I first met. I told him that I
had met a man whom I liked very much--a man with great charm; and though
I must have said the same sort of thing to him before about other men,
he was quite oddly di