“Monsieur,” she said, “I have come to pay something of a debt which I owe to you. It is a long time since you gave my poor Hector burial, but I have never forgotten, and I have brought you at last--you must not shake your head so--the money you spent.... But you MUST take it. I should be miserable if you did not. The money is all that I can repay; the kindness is for memory and gratitude always.” He looked at her wonderingly, earnestly, she seemed so unworldly, standing there, her life’s ambition not stirring beyond duty to her dead. If goodness makes beauty, she was beautiful; and yet, besides all that, she had a warm, absorbing eye, a soft, rounded cheek, and she carried in her face the light of a cheerful, engaging spirit. “Will it make you happier if I take the money?” he said at last, and his voice showed how she had moved him. “So much happier!” she answered, and she put a roll of notes into his hand. “Then I will take it,” he replied, with a manner not too serious, and he looked at the notes carefully; “but only what I actually spent, remember; what I told you when you wrote me at Hector’s death; not this ample interest. You forget, Miss Caron, that your brother was my friend.” “No I cannot forget that. It lives with me,” she rejoined softly. But she took back the surplus notes. “And I have my gratitude left still,” she added, smiling. “Believe me, there is no occasion for gratitude. Why, what less could one do?” “One could pass by on the other side.” “He was not fallen among thieves,” was his reply; “he was among Englishmen, the old allies of the French.” “But the Priests and the Levites, people of his own country--Frenchmen--passed him by. They were infamous in falsehood, cruel to him and to me.--You are an Englishman; you have heart and kindness.” He hesitated, then he gravely said: “Do not trust Englishmen more than you trust your own countrymen. We are selfish even in our friendships often. We stick to one person, and to benefit that one we sacrifice others. Have you found all Englishmen--and WOMEN unselfish?” He looked at her steadily; but immediately repented that he had asked the question, for he had in his mind one whom they both knew, too well, perhaps; and he added quickly: “You see, I am not kind.” They were standing now in the sunlight just outside the house. His hands were thrust down in the pockets of his linen coat; her hands opening and shutting her parasol slightly. They might, from their appearance, have been talking of very inconsequent things. Her eyes lifted sorrowfully to his. “Ah, monsieur,” she rejoined, “there are two times when one must fear a woman.” She answered his question more directly than he could have conjectured. But she felt that she must warn him. “I do not understand,” he said.