He drew her hands from before her face and revealed it, the underlip indrawn, the blue eyes swimming in hushed tears, all humbled in a wistful appeal. "A brute!" he repeated. "No, you are not!" Her fingers closed on his. "You are splendid; you are fine; you are all that I--that I ever----" "Vitoria!" Out in the rue du Val de Grâce that rattletrap French hurdy-gurdy struck up "Annie Laurie." It played badly; its time was uncertain and its conception of the tune was questionable; yet Cartaret thought that, save for her voice, he had never heard diviner melody. She was looking up at him, her hands clasped in his over his pounding heart, her eyes like altar-fires, her lips sacrosanct, and, wreathing her upturned face, seeming to float upon the twilight, hovered, fresh from sunlit mountain-crests of virgin snow, the subtle and haunting perfume that was like a poem in a tongue unknown: the perfume of the Azure Rose. "Vitoria!" he began again. "You don't mean that you--that you----" She interrupted him with a sharp cry. She freed her hands. She went by him to the door. Her voice, as she paused there, was broken, but brave: "You do not understand. How could you? And I cannot tell you. Only--only it must be 'Good-by.' Often I have wondered how Love would come to me, and whether he would come singing, as he comes to most, or with a sword, as he comes to some." She opened the door and stepped across the threshold. She was closing it upon herself when she spoke, but she held it open and kept her eyes on Cartaret until she ended. "I know now, my beloved: he has come with a sword." CHAPTER XI TELLS HOW CARTARET'S FORTUNE TURNED TWICE IN A FEW HOURS AND HOW HE FOUND ONE THING AND LOST ANOTHER A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.--Thoreau: _Walden_. A great deal has been said, to not much purpose, about the vagaries of the feminine heart; but its masculine counterpart is equally mysterious. The seat of Charlie Cartaret's emotions furnishes a case in point. Cartaret had resolved never to tell Vitoria that he loved her, and he told her. Similarly, when he told her, he sought to make it clear to her, quite sincerely, that he nursed no hope of winning her for his wife, and, now that she was gone, hope took possession of his breast and brought with it determination. Why not? Had she not amazingly confessed her love for him? That left him, as he saw it, no reason for abnegation; it made sacrifice wrong for them both. The secret difficulty at which she hinted became something that it was now as much his duty, as it was his highest desire, to remove. For the rest, though he could now no more than previously consider offering her a union with a man condemned to a lifelong poverty, there remained for him no task save the simple one of acquiring affluence. What could seem easier--for a young man in love?