“I must leave you now, dearest,” he said, gently releasing her, “but I shall try to see you again on Thursday, if only for a moment, to say good-bye.” “You will bring Louis, too?” she asked, and she looked at him with a gaze there was no escaping. “If I can,” said the Marquis. Suddenly she started away from him, with a hand at her breast and her whole body quivering with life. “Why ‘if you can’? Why ‘if you can’?” she cried. “You are hiding something from me! He is—he is . . . O tell me!” Château-Foix looked at the carpet. “I had not meant to tell you,” he answered gravely and reluctantly, “but perhaps you had better know. He was arrested this morning.” He heard a sort of fluttering sigh, and raised his eyes in time to see the girl, like a broken lily, sway towards the sofa behind her. He took an instinctive step forward to catch her, but she had sunk backward among the rose-coloured cushions, so gently that it was hard to realise she had no volition. She had fainted. CHAPTER XII GILBERT IS TEMPTED OF THE DEVIL “Puis une révolte surgit en lui contre lui-même, contre cette honteuse insinuation du moi défiant, du moi jaloux, du moi méchant que nous portons tous. . . . On ne peut rien contre l'Idée. Elle est imprenable, impossible à chasser, impossible à tuer.” —GUY DE MAUPASSANT, _L'Epreuve_. Château-Foix passed under the escutcheoned gateway into the street. Madame Gaumont and Lucienne’s maid, appearing on his frantic ringing of the bell, had turned him somewhat ignominiously out of the room, until the former, reissuing, had allayed his anxiety with the news that the dear child had recovered her senses, that there was nothing to fear, but that it would obviously be wiser for him not to see her again at present. The good lady gave him to understand how profound was her sympathy with the emotional crisis which had produced so moving a result.