have tossed aside her
fan, and he was startled at the intimacy of misery to which her look
and movement abruptly admitted him. Perhaps no Anglo-Saxon fully
understands the fluency in self-revelation which centuries of the
confessional have given to the Latin races, and to Durham, at any
rate, Madame de Treymes' sudden avowal gave the shock of a physical
abandonment.

"I am so sorry," he stammered--"is there any way in which I can be
of use to you?"

She sat before him with her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on his in
a terrible intensity of appeal. "If you would--if you would! Oh,
there is nothing I would not do for you. I have still a great deal
of influence with my mother, and what my mother commands we all do.
I could help you--I am sure I could help you; but not if my own
situation were known. And if nothing can be done it must be known in
a few days."

Durham had reseated himself at her side. "Tell me what I can do," he
said in a low tone, forgetting his own preoccupations in his genuine
concern for her distress.

She looked up at him through tears. "How dare I? Your race is so
cautious, so self-controlled--you have so little indulgence for the
extravagances of the heart. And my folly has been incredible--and
unrewarded." She paused, and as Durham waited in a silence which she
guessed to be compassionate, she brought out below her breath: "I
have lent money--my husband's, my brother's--money that was not
mine, and now I have nothing to repay it with."

Durham gazed at her in genuine astonishment. The turn the
conversation had taken led quite beyond his uncomplicated
experiences with the other sex. She saw his surprise, and extended
her hands in deprecation and entreaty. "Alas, what must you think of
me? How can I explain my humiliating myself before a stranger? Only
by telling you the whole truth--the fact that I am not alone in this
disaster, that I could not confess my situation to my family without
ruining myself, and involving in my ruin some one who, however
undeservedly, has been as dear to me as--as you are to--"

Durham pushed his chair back with a sharp exclamation.

"Ah, even that does not move you!" she said.

The cry restored him to his senses by the long shaft of light it
sent down the dark windings of the situation. He seemed suddenly to
know Madame de Treymes as if he had been brought up with her in the
inscrutable shades of the Hotel de Malrive.

She, on her side, appeared to have a sta