“And what, pray, is this wonderful consolation you would offer me?”

He produced from a pocket a packet of papers.

“I think madame la princesse is interested in these,” he said.  “If she will be so amiable as to accept them from me, with my compliments and one little word of advice....”

“Ah, monsieur!” Look and tone thanked him more than words could ever.  “You are too kind!  And your advice—?”

“They tell too much, madame, those letters.  And I see you have a fire in the grate ...”

“Monsieur has reason....”

She rose, went to the fireplace and, half kneeling, thrust the letters one by one into the incandescent bed of coals.  A ceremony of sentiment at any other time, but not now:  her thoughts were far from the man with whose memory these letters were linked, they were in fact not wholly articulate.  Just what was passing through her mind she herself would have found it hard to define; she was mainly conscious of a flooding emotion of gratitude to Lanyard; but there was something more, a feeling not unakin to tenderness....

The reaction of her vital young body from a desperate physical conflict, the rapid play of her passions from anger and despair through triumph and delight to gratification and content, from the bitterest sense of frustration and peril to one of security; the uprush of those strange instincts which had lain dormant till roused by the knowledge that she was free at length from the maddening stupidity of social life, together with her recent, implicit self-dedication to a life in all things its converse:  these influences were working upon her so strongly as to render her mood more dangerous than she guessed.

Disturbed in her formless reverie, an aimless groping through a bewildering maze of emotions but vaguely apprehended, she started up, faced round and saw Lanyard, topcoat over arm and hat in hand, about to open the door.

“Monsieur!”

He looked back, coolly quizzical.  “Madame?”

“What are you doing?”

“Taking my unobtrusive departure, madame la princesse, by the way I came.”

“But—­wait—­come back!”

He shrugged agreeably, released the door-knob, and stood before her, or rather over her—­for he was the taller by a good five inches—­looking down, quietly at her service.

“I haven’t thanked you.”

“For what, madame?  For treating myself to an amusing adventure?”

“It has cost you dear!”

“The fortunes of war ...”

Her hands rose unconsciously, with an uncertain movement.  Her face was soft with an elusive bloom of unwonted feeling.  Her eyes held a puzzled look, as if she did not quite understand what was moving her so deeply.

“You are a strange man, monsieur....”

“And what shall one say of madame la princesse?”

She could but laugh; and laughter rings the death-knell of constraint.