"If I told him, I would never see him again," said Madame de Carlsberg. "Ah! without that certitude--" "Well! Have the courage to do it," interrupted the other. "You had the strength to leave Cannes for a week. You should have enough to leave for good. You will not be alone. I will go with you. You will suffer. But what is that, when you think of what otherwise would happen,--that you would be everything to this young man, and he everything to you, and he would know that you had been the mistress of his friend!" "Yes, I have thought of all that," replied the Baroness, "and then I remember I might have had six months, a year, and perhaps more. And that is to have lived, to have been in this hard world for a year one's self, one's true self, the being that one is in one's innermost and deepest reality." And as she spoke she gazed at the sky with the same look that she had had at the beginning of the walk. She seemed once more to bathe her face in the moonlight, and to absorb the impassive serenity of the mountains and the stars, as though to gather force to go to the end of her desire. And as they resumed again in silence their promenade among the obscure palms, by the fragrant rose-beds, and beneath the sombre shadow of the orange trees, the faithful friend murmured:-- "I will save her in spite of herself." CHAPTER III A SCRUPLE The "Sire" de Corancez--as Madame de Carlsberg disdainfully called the Southerner--was not a man to neglect the slightest detail that he thought advantageous to a well-studied plan. His father, the vine-grower, used to say to him, "Marius? Don't worry about Marius. He's a shrewd bird." And, in truth, at the very moment when the Baroness Ely was beginning her melancholy confidences in the deserted garden alleys of the Villa Brion, this adroit person discovered Hautefeuille at the station, installed him in the train between Chésy and Dickie Marsh and manœuvred so skilfully that before reaching Nice the American had invited Pierre to visit the next morning his yacht, the Jenny, anchored in the roadstead at Cannes. But the next morning would be the last hours that Corancez could spend at Cannes before his departure, ostensibly for Marseilles and Barbentane, in reality for Italy. He had the promise of Florence Marsh that Hautefeuille's visit to the _Jenny_ would be immediately followed by an invitation to take part in the cruise of the 14th. Would Pierre accept? Above all, would he consent to act as witness in that clandestine ceremony, at which the queerly named Venetian _abbé_, Don Fortunato Lagumina, would pronounce the words of eternal union between the millions of the deceased Francesco Bonnacorsi and the heir of the doubtful scutcheon of the Corancez? The Provençal had but this last morning to persuade his friend.