Pierre was visibly affected at her loveliness and sat down beside her. "What a splendid evening to be sure, how I do enjoy these moonlight nights, don't you?" he added, turning towards her. "Yes," she answered mechanically without turning her head. "Are you sure you don't feel cold?" he asked, as he began to steal his arm around her waist. Renée never replied, but the fact that she did not remove his arm, caused him to grow bolder. "You don't know how I have longed for this opportunity of declaring my love to you, Renée," and suiting his action to his words he bent down and implanted a kiss on her lips. He could not have chosen a worse moment for his caresses. With her heart distracted with grief--her father's reproaches ringing in her ears, her natural modesty, and Delapine's mysterious words of foreboding evil, produced the same effect as the sting of a lash on a sleeping tiger. Springing up with flashing eyes and quivering lips, her whole body trembling with excitement, she gave him a blow across the face with all her strength. "How dare you? Let go, do you hear me?" and she stamped her little foot on the ground. "Let go this instant," she screamed. "Damn you, you little beast," he cried, wiping his face which was smarting terribly, and he raised his fist as if to strike back; but his natural caution, together with the fear that if he pushed matters too far he might lose all chance of possessing her, checked him, and pausing for a moment he suppressed his anger, and rapidly changed his tactics. "My darling pet!" he exclaimed after a short pause in the mildest of voices, "you really look more lovely than ever when you are in a temper," and he tried to encircle her waist again. But she shook him off with a violent effort, while trembling from head to foot. "Go! go, and never let me see you again. Henri, Henri," she shrieked at the top of her voice as he still continued his attentions. "Help me! Help me!" Renée attempted to escape, and rose up with the idea of doing so, but her limbs trembled so much that she was quite unable to walk, and dropping into her seat from sheer exhaustion, buried her face in her hands, and burst into an uncontrollable flood of tears. Pierre was becoming really frightened at what he had done, and proceeded to apologise for his conduct, but she showed no signs of having heard him. Fearing lest her sobs and cries would attract the household, Pierre stepped back shrugging his shoulders, and with a scarcely audible adieu, he hurried out of the garden humming an air to himself, and disappeared down the street in the direction of the Avenue Rossini, and hailing a passing fiacre, ordered the coacher to drive rapidly to his father's house.