“God knows,” he said hoarsely, “I never meant that you should know. God knows I have struggled against it. If things had been different. . . . Lucienne, at least kiss me once more!” Unnaturally calm now, she took his upturned face in her hands. “Louis, he trusts us,” she said simply, and stooped her lips to his. “Now go,” she said less assuredly. “Go, Louis. . . .” “Before you have time to repent,” said he bitterly. “I shall repent all my life. God! what a fool I am being—and all for a word called honour!” “Dear, dear Louis,” said the girl, half maternal, half frightened, “it is more than that. Oh, believe me, how could we ever be happy together if——” “Better than we can be happy apart!” he broke in. “But you are right, Lucienne; it is not, after all, for a word; it is for Gilbert himself. If it had been any other man. . . . I wish it were, I wish it were!” “Yes, he trusts us,” she repeated again. “And he must never know.” “No, he must never know. But I shall love you, my darling, all my life long. And sometimes—very rarely, of course”—he tried to smile—“you will think of me. . . . And, meanwhile, I shall still see you sometimes.” “But not often,” she said. “O Louis, not often! It would not be right—I could not bear it. . . . I think I would rather never see you again.” Two great tears ran down her cheeks and lay like dew on the violets at her breast. All the Cupids on the ceiling stiffened back to their places, and pretended that they had never taken any interest. CHAPTER I “MONSIEUR MON COUSIN” “ROXANE. Il faut que je revoie en vous le . . . presque frère, Avec qui je jouais, dans le parc—près du lac ! CYRANO. Oui, vous veniez tous les étés à Bergerac ! . . . ROXANE. C’était le temps des jeux. . . . CYRANO. Des murons aigrelets. . . . ROXANE. Le temps où vous faisiez tout ce que je voulais ! . . .” —ROSTAND, _Cyrano de Bergerac_. Act II. Sc. vi. On a certain bleak March afternoon of the year 1774 a solemn, long-legged boy of ten or eleven sat curled up in a window-seat of his father’s château of Chantemerle in Poitevin Vendée, and pressed his nose wistfully against the cold panes. The rain, on the wings of a fitful wind, hurled itself in blurring gusts against the glass, and even hissed now and then on the glowing logs of the great hearth. But the owner of the motionless black head, with its neat ribbon and queue, was not watching for a chance of going out, nor even wishing that the rain would cease; he was awaiting, between doubt and desire, the greatest change of his short young life.