military tribunal in Paris?"

"I do not desire to pose as a hero or a martyr," he said, quietly,
"but I regret what I have done, and I will do what an honest man can
do to make the fullest reparation--even if it means my death."

I gazed at him in admiration--real admiration--because the gross
bathos he had just uttered betrayed a weakness--vanity. Now I began to
understand him; vanity must also lead him to undervalue men. True,
with the faintest approach to eloquence he could no doubt hold the
"Clubs" of Belleville spellbound; with self-effacing adroitness to
cover stealthy persuasion, he had probably found little difficulty in
dominating this inexperienced girl, who, touched to the soul with
pity for human woe, had flung herself and her fortune to the howling
proletariat.

But that he should so serenely undervalue me at my first bray was more
than I hoped for. So I brayed again, the good, old, sentimental bray,
for which all Gallic lungs are so marvellously fashioned:

"Monsieur, such sentiments honor you. I am only a rough soldier of
the Imperial Police, but I am profoundly moved to find among the
leaders of the proletariat such delicate and chivalrous emotions--" I
hesitated. Was I buttering the sop too thickly?

Buckhurst, eyes bent on the floor, began picking to pieces his paper
toy. Presently he looked up, not at me, but at the Countess, who sat
with hands clasped earnestly watching him.

"If--if the state pardons me, can ... you?" he murmured.

She looked at him with intense earnestness. I saw he was sailing on
the wrong tack.

"I have nothing to pardon," she said, gravely. "But I must tell
you the truth, Mr. Buckhurst, I cannot forget what you have done. It
was something--the one thing that I cannot understand--that I can
never understand--something so absolutely alien to me that
it--somehow--leaves me stunned. Don't ask me to forget it.... I
cannot. I do not mean to be harsh and cruel, or to condemn you.
Even if you had taken the jewels from me, and had asked my
forgiveness, I would have given it freely. But I could not be as I
was, a comrade to you."

There was a silence. The Countess, looking perfectly miserable, still
gazed at Buckhurst. He dropped his gray, symmetrical head, yet I felt
that he was listening to every minute sound in the room.

"You must not care what I say," she said. "I am only an unhappy
woman, unused to the liberty I have given myself, not yet habituated
to the charity of th