“_Mordi!_ I drenched him once for the colic--that is all. The fool fancied he had swallowed an eft that was devouring his entrails.” He cried “_Portez vous bien!_” and a quick emotion, as of physical pain, flickered over his face like a breath of air over hot coals. Carinne was on her feet in a moment, had gone swiftly to him, and had taken his hand. “Monsieur,” she said, in a wet voice, “it is true that honour, like sweet vines, may shoot from beds of corruption. God forbid that I pass judgment on that which influences the ways of men; but only--but only, monsieur, I hope you may live very long, and may take comfort from the thought of the insignificance of the subject of your so great sacrifice.” She drooped her dear head. The other looked at her with an intense gaze. “But, nevertheless,” he said, quietly, “it was the letter of M. le Comte, of my honoured father Epicurus, that moved me to the sacrifice. That is great, as you say. I never realised how great till this moment. Yet--ah, mademoiselle! I would not sanctify it out of the category of human passions by pretending that I was induced to it by any sentiment of self-renunciation. Thyself should not have persuaded me to spare thee--nor anything less, may be, than an appeal from my preceptor in the metaphysics of the senses. I take no shame to say so. I am not a traitor to my creed; and it would offend me to be called a puritan.” He put the girl’s hand gently away from him. “Still,” he said, “I may not deem myself worthy to touch this flower with my lips.” And at that he turned and went from us, summoning Gusman to accompany him, and crying as he vanished, “Good luck and forgetfulness to all!” So disappeared from our lives this singular man, who persisted to the very last in lashing me with the thong of my own twisting. We never saw him again; once only we heard of him. As the flash of the retreating torch glimmered into attenuation, Carinne returned to me and sat down at my side. “Little Thibaut,” she said softly, “he designed me so great a wrong that I know not where to place him in my memory.” “With the abortive children of thy fancy, Carinne; amongst the thoughts that are ignorant of the good in themselves.” She sighed. “And so it was thou wast his informer as to our friendship? And why didst thou write, Jean-Louis?” “To urge him, by our one time intimacy, to cease his persecution of a beautiful and most innocent lady.” “I did not know, I did not know!” she cried; and suddenly her arms were round my neck, and I lay in a nest of love. “Oh! I am glad to be pretty, for the sake of the little Thibaut, that saved me from barbarous men, and from myself, and, alas! from my uncle! Little Thibaut, did I hurt when I beat thee? Beat me, then, till I cry with the pain.” She sobbed and laughed and held my face against her bosom. In the midst, the candle on the wall dropped like a meteor, and instantly we were immured in a very crypt of darkness.