He denied any further love, though hating to tell the lie. But Miss Brooke persisted, entreating, provoking, urging, coaxing, pouting; subtly transforming herself into the child with its lovable moods and movements; enslaving him, rendering him powerless at her will, with this one strange exception--he could be strong enough to withhold from her the episode he was ashamed of. "Paul, Paul," she said sternly. "Tell the truth. Are you not in love now?" He scarcely dared look at her. He was conscious of that lock again and of another on her forehead. "Silence betrays. Did you come to Paris for the sake of your architecture or to be near me?" "To be near you, Lisa," he breathed. CHAPTER VII. ALTHOUGH the thought of Lisa's old flirtations obtruded and pricked occasionally, Paul went about the next morning in a state of subdued happiness. A wonderful calm had come over him, disturbed only at the moments when he had to thrust from him those images of other men kissing Lisa's lips. Those meaningless loves had been long dead, he argued, and, since she had made the confession voluntarily at the risk of estranging his love, it would be unfair to her for him to dwell upon them now. At the same time he could never have conceived the possibility of such a line of argument on his part in the days before he had met Miss Brooke. Love had, indeed, set at naught all the principles he had thought to abide by--had made him yield his demand for that absolute soul-virginity he had deemed the very basis of his choice. But away with all that now! Her love for him was, of a surety, the first that had come into her life since her great sorrow. As for Pemberton, there had never been the slightest sentiment between her and him. No doubt the fellow would now take a suitable place in the background of their life, and they would welcome him as an acquaintance. Why should he bear the man animosity? He could not do any work that morning, but strolled hither and thither, getting joyous impressions from the sun-lit city. Lisa had not only promised to dine in the evening at the Cafe Pousset and afterwards to go with him to see a melodrama at the Ambigu, most of the other theatres having closed their doors, but she had given him permission to take his holiday at Perros-Guirec during the whole two months of her stay there, so that he would be virtually one of the party. The immediate outlook was, therefore, very agreeable.