Assuredly Ned had invited his own discomfiture. He had thought to operate upon this tender conscience without any right knowledge of the position of its arteries of emotion. He had bungled and let loose the flood, and straightway he was scared over the result of his own recklessness. He let Mademoiselle Legrand cry a little while, not knowing how to compromise with his convictions. He loved truth, but was not competent to cope with its erring handmaid. At last: “Nicette!” he whispered, and put his hand timidly on the girl’s shoulder. She wriggled under his touch. “No, no!” she sobbed, in a drowned voice. “It is terrible to be so hated and despised.” “I do not hate you, little fool,” he said. “You beg the question. For what reason, Nicette? Are you afraid, or at a loss, to describe to me this vision?” She seemed to check her weeping and to listen, though her bosom was still heavy with sobs. “I am afraid,” she whispered. “Of me? Nicette, shall I not finish the portrait?” “No, no!” “But you have seen the Mother, and know what she is like.” “You would not believe.” “At least put my credulity to the test.” A long pause succeeded. The sobs died into silence. By-and-by the girl looked up--not at her inquisitor, but vaguely apart from him and away, as if her gaze were introspective. She clasped her hands together, holding them thus, in reverential attitude, against her throat. “Nicette,” murmured Ned, “tell me--what is the Mother like?” “It was a mist, monsieur, out of which a face grew like a sweet-briar blossom--a face, and then all down to her pink feet that trod the wind-flowers of the wood. Within her hair were little nests of light, glowing green and violet, that came and went, or broke and were shattered into a rain of golden strands. They were the tears she had shed beneath the cross. She wore the wounds, a five-pointed star, upon her breast, and I saw the rising and falling of her heart as it were the glowing of fire behind wood ashes. All about her, and about me, was a low thick murmur of voices that I could not understand. But sometimes I thought I saw the brown fearful eyes of the little people look from under the hanging fronds of fern, imploring to put their lips to the white buds of her feet. Then _her_ eyes gathered me to their embrace; and I sailed on a blue sea, and was taken into the arms of the wind and kissed so that I seemed to swoon.” She paused, breathing softly. “Truly,” said Ned: “this was the very pagan Queen of Love.” “She is the Queen of Love, monsieur, else had my eyes never been opened to see the little folk of the greenwoods. For to be Queen of Love is to be Queen of Nature, and both titles hath she from _le Bon Dieu_.” Suddenly the girl edged a little nearer her companion, looked up in his face appealingly, and put her clasped hands upon his knee as he sat.