Pierre shook himself free with difficulty from his haunting visions,--Tetsujo's black face and burning eyes; a windswept hedge, bowing and straining in storm until at the next gust of tempest it must lie flat, like the cover of a book, showing clear her home; the white, strained, watching face; and, later, in a stiller, denser blackness, faint chinks through upright hedge-stems of bamboo falling from a broadly lighted house; his own last desperate song of Carmen; the terrible answering cry; the sound of feet on gravel; the sound of tender hands beating on thorn; a mother's sob; and then,--devouring silence. How had the sun such callousness that it could shine to-day after such a blackness? Ronsard watched him until he turned slow, haggard, miserable eyes. Then the count lowered his own. At this critical point Pierre need not perceive the glimmer of pleased hope. "I am not unacquainted with sorrow,--and of this sort, Pierre," he murmured gently. His voice might have poured from an alabaster jar. Pierre felt the soothing, and still he hesitated to reveal this deepest wound. In their one previous discussion Ronsard's words had been drops of acid. The boy shuddered anew at the remembered sting. And yet he must speak to some one. This anguish could not be borne alone. Later on, Mrs. Todd would purr platitudes above him. He did not wish them yet. Now, in his bewilderment, he needed the advice of a man,--a man's supplementary thought. "I should be glad to speak," he burst out impulsively, "only, dear sir, if you love me, give not that tonic of your worldliness at full strength. I am hurt with life almost to the point of flinging it aside!" Ronsard kept himself from shrugging. "Tut, tut," he said humorously. "Had perplexed lovers the modicum of existences attributed to that interesting animal, the cat, then might they listen to all these small gusty impulses to suicide. And, by the way, where is my Zulika, my soft, blue-tinted amorette? Fast in the sun, I'll wager. Ah, Zulika, core of my heart, come, warm me, while I hear of love!" At his words the great blue Persian who was sleeping near the fire in a spot further cheered by the full light of the morning sun, stirred drowsily, opened a reluctant eye, and closed it. She moved again, with a shrug not unlike her master, gained her feet, stretched her back upward, opened a mouth lined with pink coral, and, with a last reluctant gaze toward the warm spot she was quitting, approached her smiling master. He drew her into the chair by his side, touched her whiskered lips with a finger first dipped into sweetened coffee, shook himself and her into smoother lines of placidity, and turning again directly to Pierre, said, "Now, my son, thy father confessor is at peace. Speak what you will." The episode of the cat did not please Le Beau. Indeed, he loathed all cats, but this one in particular, in spite of its beauty.