"Mon Dieu!" he said, "you exaggerate quixotically. To give back what you took? Remember what you have already done!" "Counted in francs," she pleaded, "I have done very little. It has been difficult to do, that's all." Presently, when he perceived that, on this one point, the little weak woman was inflexible, the man made a beautiful speech, declaring that she was worth more than the opinion of Ivry-St.-Hilaire, and of all France. He said that nothing mattered to him but their "divine love." He looked more heroic still, and his eyes were moist with the nobility of the sentiments that he was delivering. But as he sat in the principal café of the town by and by, among the stacks of swords in the corners, and the elite of the military and civil circles, clearing their throats vociferously on to the floor, he knew that a few days hence he meant to deliver a second lie about the "supplications of his family and his duty as a son." Had her debt been paid, he would have held her absolved from yielding so much as another thought to the boy, and he could have afforded to pay the debt, but it did not even enter his mind to commit such a madness. Yet, in his fashion, he loved her. The "chivalry" of offering marriage to a woman without a _dot_ had proved it. It would have been kinder to her not to leave her in a fool's paradise; she was to suffer more intensely because of that. "Some of the facts, sufficient to explain the position, I have confided to my mother," he told her. "She is very old, and the honour of the family is very dear to her. I entreat you, in her name. The boy shall remain in this institution, or be placed in some other. They will teach him a trade. When the time comes for him to earn his living he will be no worse off than the other _gosses_ there. Be guided by me. I assure you, you are morbidly sensitive. There is no reason why you should ever meet him again. My adored one, our happiness is in your hands. Give the child up!" "I cannot," she repeated hopelessly. And then, all of a sudden, the imposing presence vanished and she saw the puny man--more clearly than he had ever seen himself. "It begins to be plain why you 'cannot,'" he hissed. "Zut, tell your yarn about your 'theft' to somebody greener. For _me_ it's too thin!... But why should we part, ducky? The matter could be arranged." When he had demonstrated his intelligence in this way, without advantage, the man went down the garden path, out of her life--and for an hour she sat sightless, and ageing years. The birds in the garden were making a cruel noise. She felt that she had grown too old during the afternoon to bear the shrillness of the birds. When was it that she had had the arrogance to pull out a grey hair? * * * * *