that began in the Feydau Theatre and afterwards
enveloped the whole city of Nantes--was provoked by this."

"Who was she, this girl?"

It was like a woman, he thought, to fasten upon the unessential.

"Oh, a theatre girl, a poor fool of whom I have no regrets. La Binet was
her name. I was a player at the time in her father's troupe. That was
after the Rennes business, when it was necessary to hide from such
justice as exists in France--the gallows' justice for unfortunates
who are not 'born.' This added wrong led me to provoke a riot in the
theatre."

"Poor boy," she said tenderly. "Only a woman's heart can realize what
you must have suffered; and because of that I can so readily forgive
you. But now..."

"Ah, but you don't understand, madame. If to-day I thought that I had
none but personal grounds for having lent a hand in the holy work
of abolishing Privilege, I think I should cut my throat. My true
justification lies in the insincerity of those who intended that the
convocation of the States General should be a sham, mere dust in the
eyes of the nation."

"Was it not, perhaps, wise to have been insincere in such a matter?"

He looked at her blankly.

"Can it ever be wise, madame, to be insincere?"

"Oh, indeed it can; believe me, who am twice your age, and know my
world."

"I should say, madame, that nothing is wise that complicates existence;
and I know of nothing that so complicates it as insincerity. Consider a
moment the complications that have arisen out of this."

"But surely, Andre-Louis, your views have not been so perverted that you
do not see that a governing class is a necessity in any country?"

"Why, of course. But not necessarily a hereditary one."

"What else?"

He answered her with an epigram. "Man, madame, is the child of his own
work. Let there be no inheriting of rights but from such a parent. Thus
a nation's best will always predominate, and such a nation will achieve
greatly."

"But do you account birth of no importance?"

"Of none, madame--or else my own might trouble me." From the deep flush
that stained her face, he feared that he had offended by what was almost
an indelicacy. But the reproof that he was expecting did not come.
Instead--

"And does it not?" she asked. "Never, Andre?"

"Never, madame. I am content."

"You have never... never regretted your lack of parents' care?"

He laughed, sweeping aside her sweet charitable concern that was so
superfluous. "On t