It is too late.  Unfortunately for your scheme, I am already....

He never got any further.  A fresh impulse drove him into the street.  He could not thus summarily settle his future fate.  It meant too much to him.  He must take time to think.  His heart clamors loudly for its rights; he is only twenty-six—­and in a rush of feeling which should have been his salvation, he turned toward that nest among the flowers where help was to be had if help was to come at all in this crisis of conflicting passions.

* * * * *

The hour was noon, one which he had never chosen before for a visit to Ermentrude.  Would he find her in?  Would she be in spirits to meet him?  Would she look beautiful—­worthy of his name, worthy of the greatest sacrifice a man can make for a woman?  He half hoped that she would; that he would find his chains riveted and secure beyond the power of any force to break.

As his musings faltered, he turned the knob of the little side door and went in.  As he did so a shower of rose-leaves fell upon him from the vines enveloping the balcony.

He shuddered slightly and passed down the hall.  Everything was very still.

She was asleep.  Lying on a couch in utter weariness or pain, she had drifted off into the land of dreams, and he felt that he had a moment of respite.  He could look and weigh the question:  Love or a quick success?  A weakling’s paradise or the goal of the strong man?

Meanwhile, she was not as beautiful as he thought.  But she was more touching—­less robust, less bounteous of aspect, more child-like, more appealing,—­a woman who, if he were no more of a man than he appeared to be in this hurly-burly of pleasure and fashion, might in time do him credit and hold him back from follies.

But he was not just the man these casual friends and admirers considered him.  There was much more to him than that.  He knew this better than Lucie did or her powerful brother, or even his adoring mother.  Great opportunities awaited him and a large space in the affairs of men if not of nations.  Such confidence did he feel in himself at this fevered moment that he never doubted that eventually he would gain all this, even with the handicap of a good-looking but unsophisticated wife.

But not quickly;... step by step perhaps ... and he was longing to take it all at a bound.

Poor girl! and she lay there under his eyes all unmindful of his conflict or of the fact that her fate as well as his was trembling in the balance; unmindful, though her dreams were far from joyous—­or why the tear welling from between her lashes as he gazed.

She was alone in the house; he knew it by the complete silence.  He could look and look and study her every feature, without fear of interruption; wait for her waking and be ready to meet her first glance of tender astonishment which might restore him to his better self.