But he realised at the same time how impossible it would be for any man to win her love if he were an enemy to her cause. St. Genis--royalist, émigré, retrograde like herself--had obviously won his way to her heart chiefly by the sympathy of his own convictions. But what of de Marmont, to whom she was on the eve of plighting her troth? de Marmont the hot-headed Bonapartist who owned but one god--Napoleon--and yet had deliberately, and with cynical opportunism hidden his fanatical aims and beliefs from the woman whom he had wooed and won? The thought of that deception--and of the awakening which would await the girl-wife on the very morrow of her wedding-day mayhap, was terribly repellent to Clyffurde's straightforward, loyal nature, and bitter was the contention within his soul as he found himself at the cross-roads of a divided duty. Every instinct of chivalry towards the woman loudly demanded that he should warn her--now--at once--before it was too late--before she had actually pledged her life and future to a man whom her very soul--if she knew the truth--would proclaim a renegade and a traitor; and every instinct of loyalty to the man--that male solidarity of sex which will never permit one man--if he be a gentleman--to betray another--prompted him to hold his peace. Crystal's gentle voice fell like dream-tones upon his ear. Vaguely only did he hear what she said. She was still speaking of France, of all that the country had suffered and all that was due to her from her sons and daughters: she spoke of the King, God's own anointed as she called him, endowed with rights divine, and all the while his thoughts were far away, flying on the wings of memory to the little hamlet among the mountains where two enthusiasts had exhausted every panegyric in praise of their own hero, whom this girl called a usurper and a brigand. He remembered every trait in de Marmont's face, every inflexion of his voice as he said with almost cruel cynicism: "She will learn to love me in time." That, Clyffurde knew now, Crystal de Cambray would never do. Indifferent to de Marmont to-day, she would hate and loathe him the day that she discovered how infamously he had deceived her: and to Clyffurde's passionate temperament the thought of Crystal's future unhappiness was absolutely intolerable. Here indeed was a battle far more strenuous and difficult of issue than that of a man's will against his passions: here was a problem far more difficult to solve than any that had assailed Bobby Clyffurde throughout his life. His heart cried out "She must know the truth: she must. To-day! this minute, while there was yet time! Anon she will be pledged irrevocably to a man who has lied to her, whom she will curse as a renegade, a traitor, false to his country, false to his king!"