at momentous and beneficent
event as clearly as he himself! Was she not equally with himself
involved in it? Was she not, like himself, to be cleansed and set free
by it? Therefore it came as a painful bewilderment and shock to him
when she drew closer to him, leaned forward, laid her hand lightly upon
his thigh.

"Richard," she said, very softly, "I forgive all. I am not satisfied
with loving. I will come with you. I will stay with you. I will be
faithful to you--yes, yes, even that. Your loving is unlike any other.
It is unique, as you yourself are unique. I--I want more of it."

"But you must know that it is too late to go back on that now," he
said, reasoning with her, greatly perplexed and distressed by her
determined ignoring of--to him--self-evident fact. "All that side of
things for us is over and done with."

Her lips parted in naughty laughter. And then, not without a shrinking
of quick horror, Richard beheld the soul of her--that being of lovely
proportions, exquisitely formed in every part, yet black as the foul,
liquid lanes between the hulls of the many ships down in Naples
harbour--step delicately in between those parted lips, returning whence
it came. And, beholding this, instinctively he raised her hand from
where it rested upon his thigh, and put it from him, put it upon her
glistering, crocus-yellow lap where her soul had so lately kneeled.

"Let us say no more, Helen," he entreated, "lest we both forfeit our
remaining chance, and become involved in hopeless and final
condemnation."

But Madame de Vallorbes' anger rose to overwhelming height. She slapped
her hands together.

"Ah, you despise me!" she cried. "But let me assure you that in any
case this assumption of virtue becomes you singularly ill. It really is
a little bit too cheap, a work of supererogation in the matter of
hypocrisy. Have the courage of your vices. Be honest. You can be so to
the point of insult when it serves your purpose. Own that you are
capricious, own that you have lighted upon some woman who provokes your
appetite more than I do! I have been too tender of you, too lenient
with you. I have loved too much and been weakly desirous to please. Own
that you are tired of me, that you no longer care for me!"

And he answered, sadly enough:--

"Yes, that last is true. Having seen the Whole, that has happened which
I always dreaded might happen. The last of my self-made gods has indeed
gone overboard. I care for you no longe