The spell that the girl wielded—­quite without being conscious of it; he granted her that grace—­was too potent.  It was dangerous, and he knew it.  Even imaginative and very unpractical people can be in some things surprisingly matter-of-fact, and Ste. Marie was matter-of-fact about this.  The girl had made a mysterious and unprecedented appeal to him at his very first sight of her, long before, and ever since that time she had continued, intermittently at least, to haunt his dreams.  Now he was in the very house with her.  It was quite possible that he might see her and speak with her every day, and he knew there was peril in that.

He closed his eyes and she came to him, dark and beautiful, magnetically vital, spreading enchantment about her like a fragrance.  She sat beside him on the moss-stained bench in the garden, holding out her hand cup-wise, and a sunbeam lay in the hand like a little, golden, fluttering bird.  His thoughts ran back to that first morning when he had narrowly escaped death by poison.  He remembered the girl’s agony of fear and horror.  He felt her hands once more upon his shoulders, and he was aware that his breath was coming faster and that his heart beat quickly.  He got to his feet and went across to one of the windows, and he stood there for a long time frowning out into the summer day.  If ever in his life, he said to himself with some deliberation, he was to need a cool and clear head, faculties unclouded and unimpaired by emotion, it was now in these next few days.  Much more than his own well-being depended upon him now.  The fates of a whole family, and quite possibly the lives of some of them, were in his hands.  He must not fail, and he must not, in any least way, falter.

For enemies he had a band of desperate adventurers, and the very boy himself, the centre and reason for the whole plot, had been, in some incomprehensible way, so played upon that he, too, was against him.

The man standing by the window forced himself quite deliberately to look the plain facts in the face.  He compelled himself to envisage this beautiful girl with her tragic eyes for just what his reason knew her to be—­an adventuress, a decoy, a lure to a callow, impressionable, foolish lad, the tool of that arch-villain Stewart and of the lesser villain her father.  It was like standing by and watching something lovely and pitiful vilely befouled.  It turned his heart sick within him, but he held himself to the task.  He brought to aid him the vision of his lady, in whose cause he was pursuing this adventure.  For strength and determination he reached eye and hand to her where she sat enthroned, calm-browed, serene.

For the first time since the beginning of all things his lady failed him, and Ste. Marie turned cold with fear.

Where was that splendid frenzy that had been wont to sweep him all in an instant into upper air—­set his feet upon the stars?  Where was it?  The man gave a sudden, voiceless cry of horror.  The wings that had such countless times upborne him fluttered weakly near the earth and could not mount.  His lady was there; through infinite space he was aware of her, but she was cold and aloof, and her eyes gazed very serenely beyond at something he could not see.