ut the matter in this negative way was as far as she could possibly
go. It was for him to make the positive proposal to which she had thus
thrown wide the door.

"Mademoiselle, you cannot mean..."

"I do, monsieur... irrevocably, please to understand." He looked at her
with eyes of misery, his handsome, manly face as pale as she had ever
seen it. The hand he had been holding out in protest began to shake. He
lowered it to his side again, lest she should perceive its tremor.
Thus a brief second, while the battle was fought within him, the bitter
engagement between his desires and what he conceived to be the demands
of his honour, never perceiving how far his honour was buttressed by
implacable vindictiveness. Retreat, he conceived, was impossible without
shame; and shame was to him an agony unthinkable. She asked too much.
She could not understand what she was asking, else she would never be
so unreasonable, so unjust. But also he saw that it would be futile to
attempt to make her understand.

It was the end. Though he kill Andre-Louis Moreau in the morning as he
fiercely hoped he would, yet the victory even in death must lie with
Andre-Louis Moreau.

He bowed profoundly, grave and sorrowful of face as he was grave and
sorrowful of heart.

"Mademoiselle, my homage," he murmured, and turned to go.

"But you have not answered me!" she called after him in terror.

He checked on the threshold, and turned; and there from the cool
gloom of the hall she saw him a black, graceful silhouette against the
brilliant sunshine beyond--a memory of him that was to cling as something
sinister and menacing in the dread hours that were to follow.

"What would you, mademoiselle? I but spared myself and you the pain of a
refusal."

He was gone leaving her crushed and raging. She sank down again into the
great red chair, and sat there crumpled, her elbows on the table, her
face in her hands--a face that was on fire with shame and passion. She
had offered herself, and she had been refused! The inconceivable had
befallen her. The humiliation of it seemed to her something that could
never be effaced.

Startled, appalled, she stepped back, her hand pressed to her tortured
breast.

CHAPTER X. THE RETURNING CARRIAGE

M. de Kercadiou wrote a letter.

"Godson," he began, without any softening adjective, "I have learnt
with pain and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by
breaking the pledge you gave me to abst