uck my coming across you like this."

De Loubersac seemed to have something on his mind. Despite his
protestations he did not look as if he were enjoying this chance
meeting.

"Where were you bound for, Wilhelmine?" he asked.

She looked up at her lover with sad eyes. Pointing in the direction of
the cemetery of Montemartre, she replied in a low tone:

"I am going to visit the dear dead."

"Would you allow me to accompany you?" begged de Loubersac.

Wilhelmine shook her head.

"I must ask you to allow me to go there alone. It is my custom to pray
there without witnesses."

De Loubersac turned towards Mademoiselle Berthe with a questioning
look--a gesture of interrogation.

Wilhelmine replied to it:

"As a rule I go to the cemetery alone. You see me with my companion
to-day because my father wished it. Since the sad affair which has
thrown a shadow over our life, he is in a constant state of anxiety
about my safety: he does not wish me to go about unaccompanied. I
shall be waited for at the cemetery."

Wilhelmine's candid eyes gazed at de Loubersac, who was gnawing his
moustache with a preoccupied air.

"What is the matter, Henri?" she asked.

De Loubersac came closer to Wilhelmine, grew red as fire, and without
daring to look her in the face, burst out:

"Listen, Wilhelmine! I would rather tell you everything.... Oh, you are
going to think badly of me.... The truth is--our meeting is not
accidental ... it is of set purpose on my part.... For the last two days
I have been worried--preoccupied--jealous.... I am afraid of not being
loved by you as I love you ... afraid that there is ... or was ...
something between us--dividing us--someone."...

Wilhelmine looked at her lover with the eyes of an astonished child.

"I do not understand you," she murmured.

Mastering his emotion, de Loubersac decided to make a clean breast of
it.

"I will be frank, Wilhelmine.... Your last words have increased my
torture.... Have you not spoken of _your_ dear dead, and must I learn
that you are perhaps going to pray ... at the tomb of Captain Brocq?"

More and more astonished, Wilhelmine replied:

"And suppose I were going to do so? Should I be doing wrong to pray
for the repose of the soul of the unfortunate Captain Brocq, who was
one of my best friends?"

"Ah!" cried Henri de Loubersac: "Is it love you feel for him, then?"
He looked so despairing that Wilhelmine, offended, hurt though she was
by her lover's susp