escape?"

"I always imagined that I had been assumed dead."

There was a brief spell of silence. Then--

"And now that you know, Monsieur--?"

She left the question unfinished, and held out her hands to him in a
gesture of supplication. His face paled slightly and overclouded. Her
influence, against which so long he had steeled himself, reinforced
by the debt in which she had shown him that he stood towards her,
was prevailing with him despite himself. Stirred suddenly out of the
coldness that he had hitherto assumed, he caught the outstretched hands
and drew her a step nearer. That was his undoing. Strong man though he
unquestionably was, like many another strong man his strength seemed to
fall from him at a woman's touch. He had led so austere and stern a life
during the past four years; of women he had but had the most passing of
glances, and intercourse with none save an old female who acted as his
housekeeper in Paris. And here was a woman who was not only beautiful,
but the woman who years ago had embodied all his notions of what was
most perfect in womanhood; the woman who ever since, and despite all
that was past, had reigned in his heart and mind almost in spite of
himself, almost unknown to him.

The touch of her hand now, the closeness of her presence, the faint
perfume that reached him from her, and that was to him as a symbol of
her inherent sweetness, the large blue eyes meeting his in expectation,
and the imploring half-pout of her lips, were all seductions against
which he had not been human had he prevailed.

Very white in the intensity of the long-quiescent passion she had
resuscitated, he cried:

"Mademoiselle, what shall I say to you?"

The four years that were gone seemed suddenly to have slipped away. It
was as if they stood again by the brook in the park on that April
morn when first he had dared to word his presumptuous love. Even the
vocabulary of the Republic was forgotten, and the interdicted title of
"Mademoiselle" fell naturally from his lips.

"Say that you can be generous," she implored him softly. "Say that you
prefer the debt you owe to the injury you received."

"You do not know the sacrifice you ask," he exclaimed still fighting
with himself. "I have waited four years for this, and now--"

"He is my brother," she whispered, in so wonderful a tone that words
which of themselves may have seemed no argument at all became the
crowning argument of her intercession.

"Soit!"