y dominions so vile as I. But my dominions
stretch from the olives of Italy to the fir-woods of Denmark, and there
is no nook of all of them in which I have not done a sin. But when I
bear you away I shall be doing my first sacrilege, and also my first act
of virtue." He seized her suddenly by the elbow; and she did not scream
but only pulled and tugged. Yet though she had not screamed, someone
astray in the woods seemed to have heard the struggle. A short but
nimble figure came along the woodland path like a humming bullet and
had caught Count Gregory a crack across the face before his own could
be recognized. When it was recognized it was that of Camille, with the
black elderly beard and the young ardent eyes.

Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had
entertained no doubt that the Count was merely a madman. Now she was
startled with a new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow whiskers and
yellow moustache first returned the blow of Bert, as if it were a sort
of duty, and then stepped back with a slight bow and an easy smile.

"This need go no further here, M. Bert," he said. "I need not remind you
how far it should go elsewhere."

"Certainly, you need remind me of nothing," answered Camille, stolidly.
"I am glad that you are just not too much of a scoundrel for a gentleman
to fight."

"We are detaining the lady," said Count Gregory, with politeness; and,
making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his hat if
he had had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and eventually
disappeared. He was so complete an aristocrat that he could offer his
back to them all the way up that avenue; and his back never once looked
uncomfortable.

"You must allow me to see you home," said Bert to the girl, in a gruff
and almost stifled voice; "I think we have only a little way to go."

"Only a little way," she said, and smiled once more that night, in
spite of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the devil. The
glowing and transparent blue of twilight had long been covered by the
opaque and slatelike blue of night, when he handed her into the lamp-lit
interior of her home. He went out himself into the darkness, walking
sturdily, but tearing at his black beard.

All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered this a
case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and neither party had
any difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as they were in the place.
Two smal