ts."

"I wonder if I won't," she answered.

"They were stolen from dead men--"

"Not so wicked as stealing heart and faith," she said.

"For this crime: worse than murder--"

"Not so bad as killing a soul given into your hand," she said.

"By a man the lowest of assassins!"

"Not so low," she said, "but that you claim his name, his blood and his
fortune for your own!"

Ah, they were striking at each other's naked breasts, those two. With
naked weapons. And neither of them shirked it. Not the girl, who sent
back as good as she got--not Bibi-Ri, who took even that last terrible
thrust.

"Such things do not happen." You would have thought he was putting a
form of statement. "All else aside--" he said, "all else aside, this
does not happen."

"What can you do or say to prevent?" she asked, leading him by so much.

"Anything you want of me."

"I want nothing: it would only be false."

"Anything you want me to say."

"I want to hear nothing: it would only be lies."

"Zelie," he offered, "will you marry me?"

That must have been the test, you know. In the covert, unproclaimed
struggle which had brought them both to this pass, that must have been
the gauge. Whatever thrill of satisfied passionate resentment she could
have wished must have been hers there and then.

"Will you wed with me, Zelie?"

An exultant throb escaped her.

"Too late!" she said.

But he was beyond flinching.

"Let me be sure," he begged. "I was wrong, Zelie. I was blind and mad
and heartless. I say so. But I give it up--I give up all that foolish
gilded fancy of mine, for I see what true treasure it cost me.... Or
look--petite--I give it up to you and we go seek the future together.
Heaven knows if it could ever be any worth to us after--after to-night.
But it's all I have. Zelie ... take it for my wedding gift!"

She looked him up and she looked him down, long and steadily.

"Comedian!" she said....

Well--it was rather hard. What? To twit that poor player at life with
his poor playing. At his last and best not to believe him. At his
supreme attempt to throw in his teeth that supreme mockery. Rather hard.
In effect!

It left him dumb--and again across the pause, from somewhere outside,
cut a shrill, thin whistle. Again came floating in among us, from
nowhere at all, the spectral guardian of the gates: Carron. Again from a
voice like a piping wind at a key-hole, we heard the news.

"Father Anselm has arrived. He is in the