“No--my eyes are too tired,” she replied hastily. “Mademoiselle, I am going to strike a light; but first--may I kiss your hand?” He heard her rise. The fire was dying out and he saw the long gleam of her gown in the faint beams, then her shape came between him and the glow and her hand rested on his. He kissed her fingers, then said, “You would have despised me if I had married you,”--his voice strengthened--“but now you will think of me kindly.” She drew away from him, and seemed to be absorbed and lost in the unbearable darkness. “I want to see you,” said Luc between his teeth. He took the flint and tinder from his pocket and struck it with a steady hand. As the flame flared up he strained his dim eyes across it to gaze at her. He saw her in an atmosphere of fire--the air all about her was red. Her face was more beautiful than he cared to realize; her eyes looked straight at him across the flame, and they were strained, wide, and dark with terror. The still burning tinder fell from his fingers; he put his foot on it. A voice he would not have recognized as hers came out of the obscurity. “You--you are not--much changed.” Luc laughed. “Heaven bless you,” he said sweetly. She seemed to move desperately; he heard her push a chair aside. “Oh--God--_God_!” she cried on a note of fainting anguish. He felt her skirts brush past him, the door opened, a shaft of light penetrated the darkness for a second, then the door closed. She was gone. Luc fumbled his way to the sofa where she must have been seated; the cushions were still warm where her face had rested, her tears fallen. He spread his hands over them and shivered from head to foot. He had never wanted her so much, in all the days of their summer courtship, as he wanted her now. Yet he was glad she was gone, glad it was over. She was as lost now as that other Clémence who also had closed a door on him and left him alone. His grasp tightened on the silk cushions. Out of the depths of his pain and regret flashed the alluring vision of the phantom he had chased all his life. “Glory!” he said under his breath, “still to be--achieved--not with”--he rose, staggering like one intoxicated--“the body”--he clutched the chimneypiece--“but--with--the soul!” CHAPTER IV THE CONFLICT The elder Marquis de Vauvenargues put down the _Gazette_ in which he had been reading of the opening of the spring campaign and the progress of the Chevalier de St. George through Scotland, and looked across the dining-room at his eldest son. Luc stood before the window half concealed by the long folds of the dark crimson curtains. It was late afternoon in March, and the garden was grey, misty, and fragrant; beyond the trees, just blurred with green, glowed the pale, clear blue of the fading sky, mournful, remote, and calm. “Mademoiselle de Séguy is leaving for Paris to-morrow,” said the Marquis. “Ah!” answered Luc, without moving his head.