A queer little smile stole into her face. It was even more baffling than the expression it displaced. “I am your friend,” she said slowly. “Is this the way to reward me?” He dropped to his knees and covered her hands with kisses, mumbling his plea for forgiveness. “I am so terribly unhappy,” he said over and over again. “I'd leave this house to-night if it were not that I can't bear the thought of leaving you, Yvonne. I adore you. You are everything in the world to me. I------” “Get up!” she cried out sharply. He lifted his eyes in dumb wonder and adoration, but not in time to catch the look of triumph that swept across her face. “You will forgive me?” he cried, coming to his feet. “I--I couldn't help saying it. It was wrong--wrong! But you _will_ forgive me, Yvonne?” She turned away, walking slowly toward the door. He remained rooted to the spot, blushing with shame and dismay. “Where are you going? To tell _him?_” he gasped. She did not reply at once, but drew the _portières_ apart and peered down the stairs beyond, her attitude one of tense anxiety. As she faced him a smile of security was on her lips. She leaned gracefully against the jamb of the door, her arms dropping to her sides. “Yes, I will forgive you,” she said calmly, and he realised in a flash that the verdict would have been different if there had been the remotest chance that his declaration was overheard. She would have denied him. “I adore you, Yvonne,” he cried in low tones, striding swiftly toward her, only to halt as he caught the smile of derision in her eyes. “I don't mean it in the way you think. You are so good to me. You have given me so much joy and happiness, and--and you understand me so well. I could die for you, Yvonne. I _would_ die for you. It's not the kind of love you are in the habit of commanding, you who are so glorious and so beautiful. It's the love of a dog for his master.” She waited an instant, and then came toward him. He never could have explained the unaccountable impulse that forced him to fall back a few steps as she approached. Her eyes were gazing steadily into his, and her red lips were parted. “That is as it should be,” she was saying, but he was never sure that he heard the words. His knees grew weak. He was in the toils! “Now you must pull yourself together,” she went on, in such a matter-of-fact tone that he straightened up involuntarily. “Come! Wipe the tear-stains from your cheeks.” He obeyed, but his lip still quivered with the rage that had been checked by the ascendancy of another and even more devastating emotion. She was standing quite close to him now, her slender figure swaying slightly as if moved by some strange, rhythmic melody to which the heart beat time.