Though he was looking straight at her, he was too deeply engrossed in his own thoughts to see how proudly her head went up, or to note the flash of splendid light in which her glance enveloped him.

“I was all ready to die,” he pursued, in the same meditative tone, “that morning in the Pre Catalan.  George Eveleth could have had my life for the asking.  I’d never known him to miss his mark, and he wouldn’t have missed me—­if he hadn’t had another destination for his bullet.  I’ve regretted it more than once.  I’ve had pretty nearly all that life could give me—­and I’ve made a mess of it.”

“You haven’t had—­love,” she ventured.

“Love?” he echoed, with a short laugh.  “I’ve had every kind of love but one; and that I’m not worthy of.”

“We get a good many things we’re not worthy of; but they help us just the same.”

“This wouldn’t help me,” he returned, speaking very slowly.  “I shouldn’t know what to do with it.  It would be as useless to me in my new conditions as a chaplet of pearls to a slave in the galleys.  So, what would you do?”

“I’d do right at any cost.”

She scarcely knew that the words were spoken, so intent was her thought on the strange mixture of elements in his personality.  It was not until she had waited in vain for a response that she found the echo of her speech still in her mental hearing and recognized its import.  Her first impulse was to cry out and take it back; but she restrained herself and waited.  It was an instant in which the love of daring, that was so instinctive in her nature, blew, as it were, a trumpet-challenge to the same passion in his own, while they sat staring at each other, wide-eyed and speechless, in the dancing firelight.

XXIV

On the following day the Marquis de Bienville found the execution of any intentions he might have had toward Derek Pruyn postponed by the circumstance that Miss Regina van Tromp was dead.  The helpless, inarticulate life, which for three years had served as a bond to hold more active existences together, had failed suddenly, leaving in the little group a curious impression of collapse.  It became perceptible that the hushed sick-room, where Miss Lucilla and Mrs. Eveleth were the only ministrants, had in reality been a centre for those who never entered it.  Now that the living presence was withdrawn, there came the consciousness of dispersing interests, inseparable from the passing away of the long established, which gives the spirit pause.  The days before the funeral became a period of suspended action, in which Life refrained from too marked a manifestation of its energies, out of reverence for Death.  Even when the grave was filled in, and the will read, and the family face to face with its new conditions, there was a respectful absence of hurry in beginning the work of reconstruction.  The lull lasted, in fact, till James van Tromp arrived from Paris; and it was broken then only by the banker’s desire “to get things settled” with all possible speed, so that he might return to the Rue Auber.