Madame la marquise paused and shook the ashes from her cigarette, her head on one side, her eyes half-closed, a thoughtful, wholly absorbed expression on her face. Lemois, who had listened to every word of the strange narrative, his gaze fastened upon her, made no sound, nor did he move. "And now listen to the rest: Two years later the poor cripple passed away and the next spring the two were married. The last time she came to me she brought her child with her--a baby in arms--but the dazzling light of young motherhood did not shine in her eyes--the baby had come, and she was glad, but that was all. They are both alive to-day, sitting in the twilight--their youth gone; robbed of the joy of making the first nest, together--meeting life second-hand, as it were--content to be alive and to be left alone. "As for me, knowing the whole story, I had only a deep, bitter, intense sense of outrage. I still have it whenever I think of her wrongs. God is over all and pardons us almost every sin we commit--even without our asking, I sometimes think--but the men and women who for pride's sake rob a young girl of a true and honorable love have shut themselves out of heaven." X IN WHICH WE ENTERTAIN A JAIL-BIRD What effect madame's story had made upon Lemois became at once an absorbing question. He had listened intently with deferential inclination of the head, and when she had finished had risen from his seat and thanked her calmly with evident sincerity, but whether he was merely paying a tribute to her rare skill--and she told her story extremely well, and with such rapid changes of tones and gestures that every situation and character stood out in relief--or because he was grateful for a new point of view in Mignon's case, was still a mystery to us. While she was being bundled up by Herbert and Louis for her ride home, Marc had delivered himself of the opinion that Mignon would have her lover in the end; that nothing madame had ever tried to do had failed when once she set her heart and mind to work, and that the banns might as well be published at once. But, then, Marc would have begun to set nets for larks and bought both toaster and broiler had the same idol of his imagination predicted an immediate fall of the skies. That his inamorata was twenty years his senior made no difference to the distinguished impressionist; that Marc was twenty years her junior made not the slightest difference to madame--nor did Marc himself, for that matter. All good men were comrades to her--and Marc was one: further she never went. Her rule of life was freedom of thought and action, and absolute deference to her whims, however daring and foolish.