She pauses, pulled up by a deep sigh, at the reminiscence of that young gaiety, then hurries on, as if afraid of his again breaking in upon her narrative with some scathing ejaculation. "Before three weeks were over--you know how cheerful and easy-going we were--he was quite one of us--quite as--as intimate as you were." Jim stirs uneasily, galled by the comparison. "He was a long time painting my picture--could not satisfy himself with the likeness--and began it over again several times. At first there was always someone in the room with us when I sat to him, but by-and-by, as he became more and more one of us--as his presence among us grew to be a matter of course--we were allowed often to be _tête-à-tête_." She stops to let pass two Frenchmen and a Frenchwoman of the _petit bourgeois_ class who are sauntering homewards, frisked about by two little cheerful curs, and with armfuls of hawthorn--yes; real English hawthorn--in their embrace. They look inquisitively, but not rudely, at the pale couple, and now they are out of sight. "It was a very fine autumn, as you may remember, and we used to go out sketching together. He was supposed to give us sketching lessons--the children and me. The governess was by way of always being there, but she was a sentimental creature, generally straying away by herself with a poetry-book, and we were virtually alone." Jim sees how increasingly, how horribly difficult of relation is the tale as it nears its catastrophe; but he is quite incapable of helping her. "We fell in love with one another"--almost brusquely--"and he asked me to marry him. What did his miserable poverty matter to us? He knew almost as little of the practical business of life as I, and he was full of hope and ambition. He was convinced that he had a future before him. Perhaps he had. Who knows?" There is mixed with the hurry and shame and anguish of her tone such an element of almost regretful compassion as she pronounces these last words, that Jim's jealous wrath awakes. Does she, then, love him still? In her heart for how many is there lodging at once? For Byng? For this unknown? For how many more? "Even he, high-flown as he was, knew that it was impossible that father could permit our marriage if we asked his consent; but what he laboured to convince me of was, that if the thing were once done and irrevocable, father would soon, doting as he did on me--you know he _did_ dote on me, poor father!--he would soon forgive us; and I, after awhile--oh! it was after awhile; do not think it was at once"--with a piteous effort to mitigate the severity of her silent judge--"and I have always all my life been terribly easily persuaded--I gave in." Far away a dull cloud, rain-charged, is settling over the Kabyle mountains, rubbing out their toothed ridge. Can she hold out to the end? She has not reached the worst yet.