, you
will conceive. And when he had done we could still only stare. A
picture, if you like! Zelie, the unfortunate child: and there,
distorting himself in gallant gesture, offering tribute, that foul
ambassador! The glow of fallen embers in the fire smudged him with
infernal fantasy--it lent her the softest flush, making her young beauty
to quicken and to kindle. As if a guilty angel should stoop from the
lower step of heaven to take a bribe of hell. For she assented: make no
mistake.... She was going to assent. He tendered her a small black box
of leather: she had a hand outstretched to it--when a word dropped sheer
and arresting in the silence as a pebble in a well.

It was not Mother Carron who spoke: our crafty hostess was far too
burdened just then under the collapse of all her craftiness. Decidedly
it was not me. Remained only Bibi-Ri. And in truth, he it was: though
the fact appeared as one of those momentary incredibilities of
intercourse.

"Zelie!"

Now I cannot pretend to know, what lay in the mind of that young girl.
Who could plumb such a depth? She had kept herself inscrutable. How she
actually felt toward Bibi-Ri I had no guess. She had seen him pared like
a carrot--humiliated as few could be--his little human folly and
weakness exposed, his grand hopes and aspirations made sordid and slimy.
Even his one effort, his scheme of shuffling her away into a convent
which must have seemed the sorriest cowardice, had surprised no motion
from her. But how she regarded him now was plain. In the slow lift of
her head, the heavy glitter of her eyes--plain to read.

"Zelie," he said. "You can't go on with it."

"No?" she inquired.... "No?"

Some way or other he had taken up position between the door and the
stairs.... Oh, not with any sort of flash heroism--understand me. I am
not giving you a feuilleton of melodrama. But there he put himself and
there he stayed.

Of course that brute Bombiste had bristled at the first interruption.
With a sign Zelie checked him short.... She was ready for Bibi-Ri. She
had been waiting for Bibi-Ri. One knew it. One knew this to be their
real meeting, and finally one knew who was and who had been his real
opponent. Here the issue was joined. Between the dream and the girl--as
you might say--here stood the Red Mark.

"You can't go on with it," he repeated in a voice, after all emotions,
that had become almost matter of fact. "It is unthinkable. You will not
touch those presen