rkeeper's box.

"Felicie, come and dine with me to-night at our cabaret. I should be so
glad if you would! Will you?"

"Good gracious, no!"

"Why won't you?"

"Leave me alone; you are bothering me!"

She tried to escape. He detained her.

"I love you so! Don't be too cruel to me!"

Taking a step towards him, her lips curling back from her clenched
teeth, she hissed into his ear:

"It's all over, over, over! You hear me? I am fed up with you."

Then, very gently and solemnly, he said:

"It is the last time that we two shall speak together. Listen, Felicie,
before there is a tragedy I ought to warn you. I cannot compel you to
love me. But I do not intend that you shall love another. For the last
time I advise you not to see Monsieur de Ligny again, I shall prevent
your belonging to him."

"You will prevent me? You? My poor dear fellow!"

In a still more gentle tone he replied:

"I mean it; I shall do it. A man can get what he wants; only he must pay
the price."

CHAPTER V

Returning home, Felicie succumbed to a fit of tears. She saw Chevalier
once more imploring her in a despairing voice with the look of a poor
man. She had heard that voice and seen that expression when passing
tramps, worn out with fatigue, on the high road, when her mother fearing
that her lungs were affected, had taken her to spend the winter at
Antibes with a wealthy aunt. She despised Chevalier for his gentleness
and tranquil manner. But the recollection of that face and that voice
disturbed her. She could not eat, she felt as if she were suffocating.
In the evening she was attacked by such an excruciating internal pain
that she thought she must be dying. She thought this feeling of
prostration was due to the fact that it was two days since she had seen
Robert. It was only nine o'clock. She hoped that she might find him
still at home, and put on her hat.

"Mamma, I have to go to the theatre this evening. I am off."

Out of consideration for her mother, she was in the habit of making such
veiled explanations.

"Go, my child, but don't come home too late."

Ligny lived with his parents. He had, on the top floor of the charming
house in the Rue Vernet, a small bachelor flat, lit by round windows,
which he called his "oeil-de-boeuf." Felicie sent word by the
hall-porter that a lady was waiting for him in a carriage. Ligny did not
care for women to look him up too often in the bosom of his family. His
father, who was in t