“Yes—­take me and kiss me—­kiss me until I don’t feel!—­I mean until I feel—­Henry, you said you would make me forget!”

He encircled her with his arm and led her to a sofa, murmuring every vow of passionate love; and here he sat by her and kissed her and caressed her to his heart’s content, while she remained apparently passive, but still as white as the violets in her dress, and inwardly she could hardly keep from screaming, the torture of it was so great.  At last she could bear no more, but disengaging herself from his arms she slipped on to the floor, and there sat upon a low footstool, with her back to the fire, shivering as though with icy cold.

Lord Fordyce’s instincts were too fine not to realize something of the meaning of this scene.  Although not greatly learned in the ways of women, he had kissed them often before in his life, and none had received his caresses like that.  But since she did not repulse him, he must not despair.  She perhaps was, as she said, unused to fond dalliance, and he must be more controlled, and wait.  So with an inward sense of pain and chill in his heart, he set himself to divert her otherwise, talking of the books which they both loved, and so at last, when Nicholas announced that dejeuner was ready, some color and animation had come back to her face.

But when she was alone in her room she looked out of the high window and passionately threw up her arms.

“I cannot bear it again!” she wailed fiercely.  “I feel an utterly degraded wretch.”

At breakfast the Pere Anselme watched her intently while he kept his aloof air.  He felt that something extra had disturbed her.  He was to stay in the house with them on Christmas night, because it was so cold for him to return to his home after dinner, and Sabine could not possibly spare him; she assured him he must be with them at every meal.  His wit was so apt, and with Madame Imogen’s aid he kept the ball rolling as merrily as he could.  But he, no less than Henry, was conscious that all was not well.

And afterwards, as he went towards the village, he communed with himself, his kind heart torn with the deep-seated look of resignation in the eyes of his Dame d’Heronac.

“She is too young to be made to suffer it,” he said, half aloud.  “The good God cannot ask so much, as a price for wilfulness; and if this man has grown as distasteful to her as her face seems to suggest, nothing but misery could come from their dual life.”  It was all very cruel to the Englishman, no doubt, but where was the wisdom of letting two people suffer?  Surely it was better to let only one pay the stakes, and if this thing went on, both would have equal unhappiness, and be tied together as two animals in a menagerie cage.

No gentleman should accept such a sacrifice.  If the Lord Fordyce did not realize for himself that something had changed things, it must be that he, Gaston d’Heronac, the Pere Anselme, must intervene.  It might be very fine and noble to stick to one’s word, but it became quixotic if to do so could only bring misery to oneself and one’s mate!