. I've asked you many
times for your love; and of the hard things I've had to do to-day, the
hardest is to give it back to you, now, when at last you offer it. Don't
add to my bitterness by urging it on me."

"But, Raoul," she cried, raising herself up, "you don't understand. We
regard these things differently here from the way in which you do in
France. It may be true, as you say, that in losing your honor you've
lost all--in French eyes; but we don't feel like that. We never look on
any one as beyond redemption. We should consider that a man who has been
brave enough to do what you've done to-day has gone far to establish his
moral regeneration. We can honor him, in certain ways--in _certain_
ways, Raoul--almost more than if he had never done wrong at all.
None of us would condemn him, or cast a stone at him--should we,
Lucilla?--should we, Mr. Pruyn?"

"No, no," Miss Lucilla sobbed. "We'd pity him; we'd take him to our
hearts."

"She's right, Bienville," Derek muttered, nodding toward Marion. "Better
do just as she says."

"I'm a Frenchman. I'm a Bienville. I can't accept mercy."

"But you can bestow it," the girl cried, passionately. "Any one would
tell you that, after all that has happened--after this--I should be
happier in sharing your life than in being shut out of it. I appeal to
you, Miss Lucilla! I appeal to you, Diane!--wouldn't any woman be proud
to be the wife of Raoul de Bienville after what he has done this
afternoon, no matter how the world turned against him?"

"These ladies, in the goodness of their hearts, might say anything they
chose; but nothing would alter their conviction that for you to be my
wife would be only to add misery to mistake."

"That's so," the old banker corroborated, smacking his lips, "but you
wouldn't be much worse when you'd done that than you are now; so why not
just let her have her way?"

Bienville tried to speak again, but his dry lips refused to frame the
words.

"Noble ... impossible ... drag you down," came incoherently from him,
when by a quick backward movement he stepped over the threshold into the
semi-obscurity of the hail.

The act was so sudden that seconds had already elapsed before Marion
Grimston uttered the cry that rent her like the wail of some strong,
primordial creature without the power of tears.

"Raoul, come back!"

With rapid motion she glided across the room and was in the hail.

"Raoul, come back!"

She had descended the hail, and h