“I will wait here. I must not go down,” he replied. “It would mean ruin.” Ruin! ruin! Was she face to face with ruin already, she who, two minutes ago, was as safe and happy as a young bird in its nest? He felt instantly that he had made a mistake, had been cruel, though he had not intended it. “Ruin to me,” he said at once. “Duclosse is a stupid fellow: he would not understand; he would desert me; and that would be disastrous at this moment. Go down,” he said. “I will wait here, Elise.” Her brows knitted painfully. “Oh, monsieur, I’d rather face death, I believe, than that you should remain here.” But he pushed her gently towards the door, and a moment afterwards he heard her talking to Duclosse and her mother. He sat down on the couch and listened for a moment. His veins were still glowing from the wild moment just passed. Elise would come back--and then--what? She would be alone with him again in this room, loving him--fearing him. He remembered that once, when a child, he had seen a peasant strike his wife, felling her to the ground; and how afterwards she had clasped him round the neck and kissed him, as he bent over her in merely vulgar fright lest he had killed her. That scene flashed before him. There came an opposing thought. As Madame Chalice had said, either as prince or barber, he was playing a terrible game. Why shouldn’t he get all he could out of it while it lasted--let the world break over him when it must? Why should he stand in an orchard of ripe fruit, and refuse to pick what lay luscious to his hand, what this stupid mealman below would pick, and eat, and yawn over? There was the point. Wouldn’t the girl rather have him, Valmond, at any price, than the priest-blessed love of Duclosse and his kind? The thought possessed, devoured him for a moment. Then suddenly there again rang in his ears the words which had haunted him all day: “Holy bread, I take thee; If I die suddenly, Serve me as a sacrament.” They passed backwards and forwards in his mind for a little time with no significance. Then they gave birth to another thought. Suppose he stayed; suppose he took advantage of the love of this girl? He looked around the little room, showing so peacefully in the moonlight--the religious symbols, the purity, the cleanliness, the calm poverty. He had known the inside of the boudoirs and the bed-chambers of women of fashion--he had seen them, at least. In them the voluptuous, the indulgent, seemed part of the picture. But he was not a beast, that he could fail to see what this tiny bedroom would be, if he followed his wild will. Some terrible fate might overtake his gay pilgrimage to empire, and leave him lost, abandoned, in a desert of ruin. Why not give up the adventure, and come to this quiet, and this good peace, so shutting out the stir and violence of the world?