"It is like a cage," said Eloise, "with all the birds outside."

We were sitting in the little room of the Pavilion that served as dining-room and drawing-room combined; the windows were open, the sun had set, and the birds in the wood were going to bed. Liquid calls from the depths of the trees, chatterings in the near branches, and occasional sounds like the flirting of a fan came with the warm breeze that stirred the chintz curtains and the curls of Eloise's golden hair as she sat on the broad window-seat, her busy hands in her lap, like white butterflies come to rest, listening, listening, with eyes fixed on the gently waving branches, listening, and entranced by the voices of the birds.

Through the conversation of the blackbird and the thrush came what the sparrows had to say, and the "tweet-tweet" of the swallows under the eaves.

All a summer's day, if you listened at the Pavilion, you could hear the wood-dove's mournful recitative, "Don't cry so, Susie—don't cry so, Susie—don't cry so, Susie—don't," at intervals, now near, now far.

The wood-doves had ceased their monotonous advice, and now the swallows took flight for the pyramids of dreamland, and Silence took the little, chattering sparrows in her apron, and then the greater birds. Branch by branch she robbed, reaching here, reaching there, till at last one alone was left, a thrush on some topmost bough, where the light of day still lingered. Then she found him, too; and you could hear the wind drawing over the forest, and the trees folding their hands in sleep.

Then, from away where the dark pools were, came the "jug-jug-jug" of a nightingale asking the time of her mate, and the liquid, thrilling reply: "Too early." Then silence, and the whisper of ten thousand trees saying "Hush!—let us sleep."

"Would monsieur like the lamp?"

It was Fauchard's daughter, lamp in hand, at the door. Her rough-hewn peasant's face lit by the upcast light, was turned towards us with a pleasant expression. I suppose we were both so young and so innocent in appearance that she could not look sourly upon us, though our proceedings must have seemed irregular enough to her honest mind. She looked upon us, doubtless, as lovers. We were good to look upon, though I say it, who am now old. We were young; and everything, it seems to me in these later days, is forgivable to youth.

"Oh, youth, what a star thou art!"

* * * * *

Then I rose and took my hat from the table near by.

"But you are not going?" said Eloise, one white hand seizing my coat-sleeve, and a tremble of surprise in her voice.

"But I must," replied I. "I must get back to Paris. I will come to-morrow morning. Madame Ancelot here will look after you. There are books. You will be happy, and I will come back in the morning, and we will have a long day in the forest. We will take our luncheon in a basket, and have a picnic."

"Ah, well!" sighed Eloise, looking timidly from me to Madame Ancelot, who, having placed the lamp on the table, stood, with all a peasant's horror of fresh air in the house, waiting to shut the windows, "if you must go—— But you will come back?"

"To-morrow; and you will look after her, Madame Ancelot, will you not?"

"Mais oui," said the good woman with a smile and as if she were talking to two children. "Mademoiselle need not be afraid; there are no robbers here; nothing more dangerous than the rabbits and the birds; and if there were, why, Ancelot has his gun."

Eloise tripped over to the woman and gave her a kiss; then, glancing back at me, she laughed and ran out into the tiny hall to get her hat.

"I will go with you as far as—a little way," she said, as she tied the strings of her hat, craning up on her toe-tips to see herself in a high mirror on the wall.

On the drawbridge she hung for a moment, peeping over at the still water of the moat, in which the stars were beginning to cast reflections.

"How dark, and still, and secret it looks!" murmured she. "Toto, has it ever drowned anyone?"

"Why do you ask?" replied I to the question that I myself had put to Joubert years ago.

"I don't know," said Eloise, "but it looks as if it had."

Ah, the evil moat! The water lilies blossomed there in summer; all the length of a summer's day the darting dragon-flies cast their blue-gauze reflections upon the water; Amy FÉraud and Francine Volnay might cast their laughter and cigarette-ends for ever on its surface, leaning over the bridge-rail and seeing nothing. It was left for the heart of a child to question its secret and divine its treason.

The path from the Pavilion cut through the trees and opened on the carriage-drive to the chÂteau. When we reached the drive, Eloise, terrified by the dark and the unaccustomed trees, was afraid to return alone. So I had to go back with her to the drawbridge.

"To-morrow!" said she.

"To-morrow!" replied I.

She gave me a moist kiss—just as children give; then, as if that was not enough, she flung her arms around my neck, squeezed me, and then ran across the drawbridge, laughing.

"Good-night!" I cried; and "Good-night!" followed me through the trees as I ran, for, even running most of the way, I had scarcely time to catch the last train at Evry.

It was late when I reached Paris; and as I drove through the blazing streets I felt as though I had taken a deep breath of some intoxicating air. The vision of Eloise in her new home pursued me. I felt as though I had taken a child from the jaws of a dragon. I had done a good act, and God repaid me, for Eloise had brought me a gift far better than pearls. She had brought me all that old freshness of long ago; she had brought me fresh in her hands the flowers of childhood; she had given me back the warmth of heart, the clearness of sight, the joy in little things, the joy without cause, which the war of sex and the world robs from a man.

A breath from my earliest youth—that was Eloise.

At the Place VendÔme, the servant whom I had commissioned to find out Franzius' address handed me a paper on which he had written it. It was in the Rue Dijon, Boulevard Montparnasse.

I put the paper in my pocket, ran upstairs, and, hearing voices and laughter through the partly opened door of the great salon on the first floor, I burst into the room.

Great Heavens!

The child who gets into a shower bath, and, not knowing, pulls the string, could not receive a greater shock than I.

The room was filled with gentlemen in correct evening attire. It was, in fact, one of what my guardian was pleased to call his "political receptions."

I was dressed in a morning frock-coat, the dust of Etiolles was on my boots, my hair was in disorder, my face flushed. If I had entered rolling-drunk, in evening clothes, I would not have committed so great a crime against the convenances.

And it was too late to back out, simply because my impetuosity had carried me into the room too far.

My guardian gazed at the spectacle before him, but not by as much as the lifting of an eyebrow did that fine old gentleman betray his discomfiture.

He turned from the Spanish ambassador, to whom he was talking, came forward and took my hand; inquired, in a voice raised slightly so as to be distinct, about my journey; apologised for not having informed me that it was one of his political evenings, and introduced me to the Duc de Cadore.

Then—and this was his punishment—he totally ignored me for the remainder of the evening.

I cannot remember what the Duc de Cadore said to me, or I to him; but we talked, and I ate ices which I could not taste. I would have frankly beaten a retreat, now that I had made my entry and faced the fire, but for a young man who, engaged in a conversation with two of the attachÉs of the Austrian Embassy, looked in my direction every now and then. It was my evil genius, the Comte de Coigny.

The same who, as a boy in the garden of the HÔtel de Moray, had told me of the ruin of the Felicianis. I had not come across him since he left the Bourdaloue College. He was now, it seems, an attachÉ of the Emperor's, and he was just the same as of old, though bigger. A stout young man, with a stolid, insolent face; and I guessed, by his side-glances, that his conversation with the Austrians was about me, and that I was being discussed critically and sarcastically.

God! how I hated that young man at that moment; and how I longed to cross the room, and, flinging the convenances to the winds, smack him in the face! But that pleasure was to be reserved for another hand than mine.

When the unhappy political reception was over, and the last of the guests departed, I sought my guardian in the smoking-room, to make my apologies.

"My dear sir," said my guardian, with a little, kindly laugh that took the stiffness from the formality of his address and turned it into a little joke, "on my heart, I did not perceive what you were attired in. A host is oblivious of all things but the face and the hand of his guest. Were the Duc de Bassano or M. le Duc de Cadore to turn up at a reception of mine attired as a rag-picker, I would only be conscious that I was receiving the Duc de Cadore or the Duc de Bassano. They would be for me themselves, however their fellow-guests might sneer!

"And how have we enjoyed ourselves in Paris?" asked the kindly old gentleman, turning from the subject of dress, and lighting a fresh cigar.

"Oh, very well," I said. "And, by the way, I have met an old acquaintance."

"Ah!"

"Mademoiselle Feliciani, a daughter of Count Feliciani."

"Count Feliciani, the—er—defaulter?"

"I don't know what he may have done," said I, "but I met them years ago, at the Schloss Lichtenberg. Then they were entirely ruined. I met Mademoiselle Feliciani last night in a most curious way; and she has been living in great poverty. In fact, I"—and here I blushed, I believe—"I have taken her under my protection."

Protection! Oh, hideous word, uttered in the simplicity of youth! Beautiful word, that men have debased—men who would debase the angels, could they with their foul hands touch those immaculate wings.

"I hope, sir, you don't object?"

"Object!"

"I have given her the Pavilion to live in," continued I, encouraged by my guardian's smile of frank approval. "The only thing that grieves me is," I went on, "that her mother is dead, and that I cannot offer her my protection, too."

My guardian opened his eyes at this; and I blundering along, blushing, surprised into one of those charming confidences of youth which youth so rarely betrays, told him of the beauty of the Countess Feliciani, and of how much I had admired her as a child, and how I had visited her and seen her, prematurely aged, ruined, the gold of her beautiful hair turned to snow, her face lined with the wrinkles of age; and then it was, I think, that M. le Vicomte began to perceive that my relationship with Eloise was other than what he had imagined.

"A pure love!" I can imagine him saying to himself. "Why, mon Dieu! that might lead to marriage—marriage with a Feliciani—an outcast, a beggar! We must arrange all this; it is a question of diplomacy."

But by no sign did he betray these thoughts. He listened to the woes of the Felicianis, the picture of sympathetic benevolence; and, when I had finished, he said: "Ah, poor things!" And then, after a moment's reverie, as though he were recalling the love affairs of his own youth: "It is sad. Tell me, are you very much enamoured of this Mademoiselle Feliciani?"

"Good heavens!" I said. "No. I care for her only—only—that is to say, I only care for herself."

A confused statement apparently, yet an unconscious and profound criticism on Love.

The Vicomte raised his eyebrows. He was I think, frankly puzzled. He saw my meaning—that I cared for Eloise as a child or a sister. His profound experience of life had never, perhaps, brought a similar case to the bar of his reason; his profound knowledge of men and women told him of the danger of the thing.

"How has Mademoiselle Feliciani been living since the death of her mother?" asked he.

"She has been a model at Cardillac's studio," I replied.

"Indeed? Poor girl! And now, may I ask, what do you propose to do with this protÉgÉe of yours?"

"I? Just give her a home and what money she requires."

"In fact," said the Vicomte, "you, a young man of nineteen, are going to adopt a beautiful young girl of the same age, or younger, out of pure charity, give her a house to live in, pay her expenses——"

"Yes," I replied. "God has given me money; and I thank God that He has given me the means of rescuing the sweetest and the purest woman living from a life that could lead her nowhere but to the morgue. Monsieur, what is the matter?"

The Vicomte was crimson, and making movements with his hands as though to wave away a gauzy veil. At least, that was the impression the outspread fingers gave me.

Then he laughed out aloud, the first time I had ever heard him laugh so.

"Forgive me," he said. "I am not, indeed, laughing at you. I am amused at no thing or person: it is the imbroglio. What you have told me is interesting, and I take it as a profound secret. Say nothing of it to anyone; for if it were known——"

"Yes?"

"Why, the whole of Paris would be laughing!"

I arose, very much affronted and huffed. And I was a fool, for what my guardian said was perfectly correct. The situation to a French mind was as amusing as a Palais Royal farce. But I knew little of the world, and, as I say, I arose very much affronted and huffed.

"Good-night, sir."

My guardian rose up and bowed kindly and courteously, but with the faintest film of ice veiling his manner.

"Good-night."