“Oh, monsieur! one need not drink much wine, I see, to yield oneself to insolence.” “Well, you are angry over that kiss. But it was a jest, Théroigne. My heart was as cold as this basin.” Did this improve matters? “No doubt,” she said, flushing up, “you only lack the opportunity to be a Judas. And is it so they treat women in your barbarous island?” “They treat them as they elect to be treated. We have a saying that as one makes one’s bed, so one must lie on it.” “It is a noble creed!” cried the girl derisively. “It is the Pharisee speaking in English.” “Nay, mademoiselle. It is to be vertebrate, that is all. To condone evil on the score of provocation to evil, to excuse it on the ground of constitutional tendency--that is the first infirmity of declining races.” She looked at him mockingly, then fell into a little musing fit. “Perhaps it is the right point of view,” she murmured; “but for us--_mon Dieu_! our eyes will get bloodshot and our vision obscured, and--yes, I would rather die of fire than of frost.” She turned upon him, still pondering. “It is strange. They say you are a great lord in your own country.” “I am nephew to one, and his heir.” “And is he like you?” Ned permitted himself a snigger. “He is very unlike me. He is the _doyen_, perhaps, of Lotharios.” “An old man?” “Yes, old.” “And you travel like a _commis voyageur_--for experience, says the gross Van Roon! There must be something of courage in you Englishmen, after all, though you will run before us where you are fewer than ten to one.” Ned changed the subject. “Why were you so hurt last night by my reference to Nicette?” “She is a saint.” “How do you know?” “How does a blind man know when some one sits at an open window by which he passes? He feels the presence--that is all.” “That is all, then?” “No; but this--Nicette cried lustily till the waters of baptism redeemed her, and thereafter never again: so early was the devil expelled from that sweet shrine.” “And the little brother--is he a saint too?” Théroigne laughed contemptuously. “Baptiste? Oh, to be sure! the little unregenerate! He is the devil’s imp rather.” “They are orphans?” “Since three years. The girl mothers him, the graceless rogue.” “I wronged her in ignorance, you see. That club of good-fellowship--it was all so concordant, so much in harmony with its own laws of frolic give-and-take. Why should a very saint be superior to so genial a fraternity?” “We are a fraternity, as monsieur says, extending the hand of brotherhood to----”