to reward
you with my presence at the rite.... Are you dizzy? You are terribly
pale.... Would you lean on my arm?"

I was not dizzy, but I did so; and if such deceit is not pardonable,
there is no justice in this world or in the next.

The tea was hot and harmless; I lay thinking while she sat in the
sunny window-corner, nibbling biscuit and marmalade, and watching me
gravely.

"My appetite is dreadful in these days," she said; "age increases
it; I have just had my chocolate, yet here am I, eating like a
school-girl.... I have a strange idea that I am exceedingly young,...
that I am just beginning to live. That tired, thin, shabby girl you
saw at La Trappe was certainly not I.... And long before that, before
I knew you, there was another impersonal, half--awakened creature, who
watched the world surging and receding around her, who grew tired even
of violets and bonbons, tired of the companionship of the indifferent,
hurt by the intimacy of the unfriendly; and I cannot believe that she
was I.... Can you?"

"I can believe it; I once saw you then," I said.

She looked up quickly. "Where?"

"In Paris."

"When?"

"The day that they received the news from Mexico. You sat in your
carriage before the gates of the war office."

"I remember," she said, staring at me. Then a slight shudder passed
over her.

Presently she said: "Did you recognize me afterward at La Trappe?"

"Yes,... you had grown more beautiful."

She colored and bent her head.

"You remembered me all that time?... But why didn't you--didn't
you--" She laughed nervously. "Why didn't we know each other in those
years? Truly, Monsieur Scarlett, I needed a friend then, if ever;... a
friend who thought first of me and last of himself."

I did not answer.

"Fancy," she continued, "your passing me so long ago,... and I
totally unconscious, sitting there in my carriage,... never dreaming
of this friendship which I ... care for so much!... Do you remember at
La Trappe what I told you, there on the staircase?--how sometimes the
impulse used to come to me when I saw a kindly face in the street to
cry out, 'Be friends with me!' Do you remember?... It is strange that
I did not feel that impulse when you passed me that day in Paris--feel
it even though I did not see you--for I sorely needed kindness then,
kindness and wisdom; and both passed by, at my elbow,... and I did not
know." She bent her head, smiling with an effort. "You should have
thrown yours