She raised her head, and he saw that she had been crying. But there was in her face a light, a wildness, a yearning that reassured him. She put her arm round him and pressed her cheek to his. He divined that she, too, had lived and felt a thousand hours in one. With a glow of ecstatic joy he began to talk to her again, her head resting on his shoulder, her slender hands crushed in his. And Julie, meanwhile, was saying to herself, "Either I go to him, as he asks, or in a few minutes I must send him away--forever." And then as she clung to him, so warm and near, her strength failed her. Nothing in the world mattered to her at that moment but this handsome, curly head bowed upon her own, this voice that called her all the names of love, this transformation of the man's earlier prudence, or ambition, or duplicity, into this eager tenderness, this anguish in separation.... "Listen, dear!" He whispered to her. "All my business can be got through the day before you come. I have two men to see. A day will be ample. I dine at the Embassy to-morrow night--that is arranged; the day after I lunch with the Military Secretary; then--a thousand regrets, but I must hurry on to meet some friends in Italy. So I turn my back on Paris, and for two days I belong to Julie--and she to me. Say yes, Julie--my Julie!" He bent over her, his hands framing her face. "Say yes," he urged, "and put off for both of us that word--_alone_!" His low voice sank into her heart. He waited, till his strained sense caught the murmured words which conveyed to him the madness and the astonishment of victory. * * * * * Léonie had shut up the house, in a grim silence, and had taken her way up-stairs to bed. Julie, too, was in her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, her head drooped, her hands clasped before her absently, like Hope still listening for the last sounds of the harp of life. The candle beside her showed her, in the big mirror opposite, her grace, the white confusion of her dress. She had expected reaction, but it did not come. She was still borne on a warm tide of will and energy. All that she was about to do seemed to her still perfectly natural and right. Petty scruples, conventional hesitations, the refusal of life's great moments--these are what are wrong, these are what disgrace! Romance beckoned to her, and many a secret tendency towards the lawless paths of conduct, infused into her by the associations and affections of her childhood. The _horror naturalis_ which protects the great majority of women from the wilder ways of passion was in her weakened or dormant. She was the illegitimate child of a mother who had defied law for love, and of that fact she had been conscious all her life. A sharp contempt, indeed, arose within her for the interpretation that the common mind would be sure to place upon her action. "What matter! I am my own mistress--responsible to no one. I choose for myself--I dare for myself!"