only because I loved you, but because you had cast a veil about
you. And of all enchanting mysteries the most holding to man is the
woman in the mask. You still wear a mask, Madame, only I have lifted a
corner of it. And now I love you with the full love of a man, a love
that has been analyzed and proved."

"I will go to Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, who is within the convent."
Madame rose quietly, her eyes averted. She would gladly have flown,
but that would have been undignified, the acknowledgment of defeat.
And just now she knew that she could not match this mood of his.

Gently he caught her hand and drew her back to the seat.

"Pardon, but I can not lose you so soon. Mademoiselle is doubtless at
prayer and may not be interrupted. I have so many questions to ask."

Madame was pale, but her eyes were glowing. She folded her hands with
a passiveness which boded future ill.

"When you said that you trapped me that night at the Palais Royal,
simply to take a feather from my plume, you did not mean that. You had
some deeper motive."

Madame's fingers locked and unlocked. "Monsieur . . . !" she began,

"Why, it seems only yesterday that it was 'Paul'," he interrupted.

"Monsieur, I beg of you to let me go. You are emulating Monsieur
d'Herouville, and that conduct is beneath you."

"But will you listen to what I have to say?"

"I will listen," with a dangerous quiet. "Go on, Monsieur; tell me how
much you love me this day. Tell me the story of the oriole, whose mate
this year is not the old. Go on; I am listening."

A twinge of his recent cowardice came back to him. He moistened his
lips.

"Why do you doubt my love?'"

"Doubt it! Have I not a peculiar evidence of it this very moment?"
sarcastically. Madame was gathering her forces slowly but surely.

"I have asked you to be my wife, not even knowing who you are."

Madame laughed, and a strain of wild merriment crept into the music of
it. "You have great courage, Monsieur."

"It is laughable, then?"

"If you saw it from my angle of vision, you would also laugh." The
tone was almost insolent.

"You are married?" a certain hardness in his voice.

Madame drew farther back, for he looked like the man who had, a few
nights since, seized her madly in his arms.

"If you are married," he said, his grey eyes metallic, "I will go at
once, for I should know that you are not a woman worthy of a man's
love."

"Go on, Monsieur; you interest me.