“So it seems,”--she became slack and weary again, and the blood ebbed from her face,--“and yet there was a chance for one not so nice about his means.” Luc raised his hand and let it fall. “Before I go, tell me why you wished to help me. I cannot understand why you should have any interest in one so different from your world.” She buried her face in the cushions at the head of the sofa and did not answer. The room seemed very silent and remote to Luc; the dusty motes in the sunbeams conveyed a sense of desolation; they seemed very far away from the world. The windows looked on the neglected garden, and there was not a sound from without. He stared at the woman with the hidden face. His vision of a flame-like purity, scornful of the world, yet kind, serene, and lovely, was gone for ever, but towards this creature who was so brave, so mysterious, yet so commonplace, so rare and yet so cheap, the tool of party intrigue, the slave of men like M. de Richelieu, he felt a cold pity, a cold tenderness, a disenchanted interest. She had been slowly revealed to him from the moment that M. de Richelieu crossed the long grass towards them; she was now as plain to him as she ever could be. He did not regret so much this exposure of the uses to which she had put her gift of lovely life, but the fact that she had been able so long to fling a false glittering light over his own path. But now he was completely free of her; this light was, as he had told her, for ever quenched, and those higher, holier fires that were the true objects of his devotion burnt the brighter and more gloriously. She lifted her face; it was pale and marked on the cheek with a red line from the rough bullion edging of one of the cushions. “I wonder how you would judge me if you knew the whole truth?” she said. There was a weakness in this that yet further cast her outside his sympathies. “Neither you nor I know the whole truth of anything,” he answered. “You are too courteous.” Her voice had sunk to a trembling whisper. She seemed very angry. “Why do you not tell me to my face that you think yourself degraded by my mere presence? Dear God, I wonder where you will find the woman you imagine! You are too severe for this frivolous age!” Her delicate railing meant nothing to him; he felt as he had felt in the Governor’s house at Avignon--like one who has been diverted from his path, and is anxious to return to it. He took up his beaver and his green cloak. His serenity seemed to exasperate her almost beyond endurance; she sat up on the sofa, and the crystal heart depending from her bosom shuddered with her distressed breaths. “What have I done to you?” she asked frantically. “What have I done to you? Never heed others--what have I done to _you_?” He answered her gently. “In truth, nothing. I shall never have anything to say against you--why should I?” She eyed him keenly and made another attempt to get within his guard. “Why do you refuse my help?”