She took a leaf that had fallen on her hair and tore it slowly to shreds. "Yes," he continued, warming to the subject, "you but resume in a year what woman has struggled for throughout the centuries. What is marriage but the instinct of self-preservation? Who imagined the bond? The weaker being, woman; and all the advances up the social scale have resulted from her silent striving toward equality with man. Without marriage you are a slave at the mercy of an angry word or a hostile mood; a slave who, in her search for security, must learn, without tears or show of fatigue, to render herself indispensable to the man." Nicole rose abruptly, frowning, and with nervous fingers; but immediately she reseated herself with a forced laugh. Presently, seeing that he had said more than he should have, he withdrew, leaving her immersed in the reverie his words had awakened. Goursac had guessed truly. What womankind has endured, she had begun from the bottom. The instinct of self-preservation within her had awakened the immense intuitions that in the silent, enduring conflict of the sexes alike direct the wife, the mistress, and the outcast. She had studied Barabant, seeking the needs of his temperament, discovering his faults, and leading him to gradual dependence on her. Her imagination awoke. She saw the peril of mere domestic companionship. Where at first she had belittled the force of passionate love, she had come to realize its necessity and the need of constantly provoking his curiosity. She hid her thoughts from him, making of herself a mystery, employing that coquetry which, to the seeing eye, has at the bottom nothing but pathos. She had loved as a child. She had become an actress. But in her heart of jealousy and doubt she knew well all her artifices could avail no longer than her youth. In marriage alone was peace and security. The daring of the thought frightened her. She knew it to be beyond her lot, nor in her devotion to Barabant would she have it so, but each day the dream returned, as from a pit one sees a star, or from a wreck the beacon on the forbidden shore. Barabant found her lost in reverie, the leaves again unnoticed on her shoulders. "The effect is pretty," he said, smiling down at her. "On whom the leaves fall and rest, the earth will fall before the year is out," Nicole said. "That's the superstition." "Nicole, I forbid you to say such things," he cried sharply. "They hurt me, and you know it!" Satisfied with this evidence of his affection, she sprang up, brushing away the leaves, and saying with a smile: "There, they have no power now." "You are early." "Yes; I was a little melancholy; I wanted to reflect. The gardens are delightful for that." "I do not find them so."