"You are not fit to go," Bonne continued. "You will faint or fall. You are ill now." "But they will find out!" the Countess wailed, hiding her face on Bonne's shoulder. "They will find out!" "They will not find out," Bonne replied firmly. "And I--why should I not go? You have done one night. I will do one." "Oh, if you would! But will you--not be afraid?" The Countess's eyes were full of longing. If only she could accept with honour! "I shall not be afraid," Bonne answered confidently. "And no one need know, no one shall know. M. des Ageaux does not talk to you?" "No. But if it be found out, everybody--ah, I shall die of shame! Your brother, Roger, too--and everybody!" "No one shall know," Bonne answered stoutly. "No one. Besides, you have been once. It is not as if you had not been!" And the child, with the memory of the night pressing upon her, jumped at that. "Then I shall go to-morrow night," she said. "I shall go to-morrow night." Bonne was clear that she was not fit to go again. But she let that be for the moment. "That shall be as you wish," she answered comfortably. "We will talk about that to-morrow. For to-night it is settled. And now you must try if you cannot go to sleep. If you do not sleep you will be ill." CHAPTER XVI. TO DO OR NOT TO DO? To do or not to do? How many a one has turned the question in his mind; this one in the solitude of his locked room, seated with frowning face and eyes fixed on nothingness; that one amid the babble of voices and laughter, masking anxious thought under set smiles. How many a one has viewed the act she meditated this way and that, askance and across, in the hope of making the worse appear the better, and so of doing her pleasure with a light heart. Others again, trampling the scruple under foot, have none the less hesitated, counting the cost and striving to view dispassionately--with eyes that, the thing done, will never see it in that light again--how it will be with them afterwards, how much better outwardly, how much worse inwardly, and so to strike a balance for or against--to do or not to do. And some with burning eyes, and minds unswervingly bent on the thing they desire have yet felt hands pluck at them, and something--be it God or the last instinct of good--whispering them to pause--to pause, and not to do!