gave it an aspect of retribution, under which her cry of innocence was insufferable in its feebleness.  It would have been different with her if Beauchamp had taken advantage of her fever of anxiety, suddenly appeased by the sight of him on the evening of his arrival at Tourdestelle after the storm, to attempt a renewal of their old broken love-bonds.  Then she would have seen only a conflict between two men, neither of whom could claim a more secret right than the other to be called her lover, and of whom both were on a common footing, and partly despicable.  But Nevil Beauchamp had behaved as her perfect true friend, in the character she had hoped for when she summoned him.  The sense of her guilt lay in the recognition that he had saved her.  From what?  From the consequences of delirium rather than from love—­surely delirium, founded on delusion; love had not existed.  She had said to Count Henri, ’You speak to me of love.  I was beloved when I was a girl, before my marriage, and for years I have not seen or corresponded with the man who loved me, and I have only to lift my finger now and he will come to me, and not once will he speak to me of love.’  Those were the words originating the wager of the glove.  But what of her, if Nevil Beauchamp had not come?

Her heart jumped, and she blushed ungovernably in his face,—­as if he were seeing her withdraw her foot from the rock’s edge, and had that instant rescued her.  But how came it she had been so helpless?  She could ask; she could not answer.

Thinking, talking to her heart, was useless.  The deceiver simply feigned utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable.  She burned to do some act of extreme self-abasement that should bring an unwonted degree of wrath on her externally, and so re-entitle her to consideration in her own eyes.  She burned to be interrogated, to have to weep, to be scorned, abused, and forgiven, that she might say she did not deserve pardon.  Beauchamp was too English, evidently too blind, for the description of judge-accuser she required; one who would worry her without mercy, until-disgraced by the excess of torture inflicted—­he should reinstate her by as much as he had overcharged his accusation, and a little more.  Reasonably enough, instinctively in fact, she shunned the hollow of an English ear.  A surprise was in reserve for her.

Beauchamp gave up rowing.  As he rested on the sculls, his head was bent and turned toward the bank.  Renee perceived an over-swollen monster gourd that had strayed from a garden adjoining the river, and hung sliding heavily down the bank on one greenish yellow cheek, in prolonged contemplation of its image in the mirror below.  Apparently this obese Narcissus enchained his attention.

She tapped her foot.  ‘Are you tired of rowing, monsieur?’

‘It was exactly here,’ said he, ’that you told me you expected your husband’s return.’

She glanced at the gourd, bit her lip, and, colouring, said, ’At what point of the river did I request you to congratulate me on it?’