ment of her youth and
loveliness--the subtle influence of physical vigor and spiritual
innocence on a tired, unstrung man?

"First of all," she said, impulsively, "I know your life--all of it
in minute particular. Are you astonished?"

"No, madame," I replied; "Mornac showed you my dossier."

"That is true," she said, with a troubled look of surprise.

I smiled. "As for Mornac," I began, but she interrupted me.

"Ah, Mornac! Do you suppose I believed him? Had I not proof on proof
of your loyalty, your honor, your courtesy, your chivalry--"

"Madame, your generosity--and, I fear, your pity--overpraises."

"No, it does not! I know what you are. Mornac cannot make white
black! I know what you have been. Mornac could not read you into
infamy, even with your dossier under my own eyes!"

"In my dossier you read a sorry history, madame."

"In your dossier I read the tragedy of a gentleman."

"Do you know," said I, "that I am now a performer in a third-rate
travelling circus?"

"I think that is very sad," she said, sweetly.

"Sad? Oh no. It is better than the disciplinary battalions of
Africa."

Which was simply acknowledging that I had served a term in prison.

The color faded in her face. "I thought you were pardoned."

"I was--from prison, not from the battalion of Biribi."

"I only know," she said, "that they say you were not guilty; that
they say you faced utter ruin, even the possibility of death, for the
sake of another man whose name even the police--even Monsieur de
Mornac--could never learn. Was there such a man?"

I hesitated. "Madame, there is such a man; _I_ am the man who
_was_."

"With no hope?"

"Hope? With every hope," I said, smiling. "My name is not my own,
but it must serve me to my end, and I shall wear it threadbare and
leave it to no one."

"Is there no hope?" she asked, quietly.

"None for the man who _was_. Much for James Scarlett, tamer of lions
and general mountebank," I said, laughing down the rising tide of
bitterness. Why had she stirred those dark waters? I had drowned
myself in them long since. Under them lay the corpse of a man I had
forgotten--my dead self.

"No hope?" she repeated.

Suddenly the ghost of all I had lost rose before me with her
words--rose at last after all these years, towering, terrible, free
once more to fill the days with loathing and my nights with hell
eternal,... after all these years!

Overwhelmed, I fought down the spectre in silence. Kit