Mr. Ledoux looked on, troubled and perplexed, but he saw no chance, and indeed no real reason, for interfering.

The Count de Roannes was irritated, at times even provoked, but he kept his thoughts to himself, hiding his annoyance, and his secret explosions of “Au diable!” beneath his usual urbanity.

There was nothing on the surface to indicate more than the customary familiarity of young people thrown together for a time, and yet no one could fail to realize the undercurrent of emotion below the gaiety of the daily ripple of amusement and pleasurable excitement and converse.

They read together, they exchanged experiences of travel, they discussed literature, music, art and the stage, with the enthusiastic partisanship of zealous youth.  They talked of life, with its shade and shadow, its heights and depths of meaning, and altogether became very well acquainted.  Each day anew, they discovered an unusual congeniality in thoughts and opinions.  They shared in a large measure the same exalted outlook upon life—­the same lofty ambitions and dreams.

And the more Paul learned of the character of this strange girl, the more he felt that she was the one woman in the world for him.  To be sure, he had known that, subconsciously, the first time he had heard her voice.  Now he knew it by force of reason as well, and he cursed the fate that denied him the right to declare himself her lover and claim her before the world.

One thing that impressed Paul about the girl was the generous charity with which she viewed the frailties of human nature, her sincere pity for all forms of human weakness and defeat, her utter freedom from petty malice or spite.  Rail at life and its hypocrisies, as she often did, she yet felt the tragedy in its pitiful short-comings, and looked with the eye of real compassion upon its sins and its sinners, condoning as far as possible the fault she must have in her very heart abhorred.

“We all make mistakes,” she would say, when someone retailed a bit of scandal.  “No human being is perfect, nor within a thousand miles of perfection.  What right then have we to condemn any fellow-creature for his sins, when we break just as important laws in some other direction?  It’s common hypocrisy to say, ’We never could have done this terrible thing!’ and draw our mantle of self-righteousness closely about us lest it become contaminated.  Perhaps we couldn’t!  Why?  Because our temptations do not happen to lie in that particular direction, that’s all!  But we are all law-breakers; not one keeps the Ten Commandments to the letter—­not one!  Attack us on our own weak point and see how quickly we run up the flag of surrender—­and perhaps the poor sinner we denounce for his guilt would scorn just as bitterly to give in to the weakness that gets the best of us. Sin is sin, and one defect is as hideous as another.  He who breaks one part of the code of morality and righteousness is as guilty—­just exactly as guilty—­as he who breaks another.  Isn’t the first commandment as binding as the other nine?  And how many of us do not break that every day we live?”