We had finished our meal—simple enough, goodness knows. Our drink had been milk carried in one of those clear glass bottles used for vin de Grave, and the bottle lay on the grass beside us, an innocent witness of our temperance. We had finished, I say, and we were watching a moorhen with her convoy of chicks paddling on the deep-blue surface of the pond, when voices from amidst the trees drew our attention; and two stout men in undress livery, bearing a basket between them, came from beneath the shade of the elms, and straight towards us. After the men, and led by Madame Ancelot's little boy, came a party of ladies and gentlemen, amidst whom I recognised my guardian. The old gentleman, as though May had touched him with her magic wand, had discarded his ordinary sober attire, and was dressed in a suit of some light-coloured material, very elegant, and harmonising strangely well with the exquisite toilets of his companions. He wore a flower in his buttonhole, and he was walking beside a girl whom I recognised at once as Amy FÉraud. The two other women I did not then know; but one of them, dark and beautiful, I afterwards discovered to be the famous model La Perouse. The two men who made up the party were peers of France; and if Beelzebub himself had suddenly broken from the trees I could not have been more disturbed than by this eruption of Paris into our innocent paradise.

In a flash I saw the whole thing. This was some move of my guardian's. I had told Madame Ancelot that we would be by the grand pool, and Madame Ancelot's boy had led them.

But M. le Vicomte was much too astute an old gentleman for subterfuge, whatever his plan might be.

"Welcome!" he cried, when we were within speaking distance. "I have been searching for you. Ah, what a day! We have just come down from Paris on M. le Comte de ——'s drag. My ward, M. Patrique Mahon; M. le Comte de ——."

I bowed stiffly as he introduced me to the men.

"And mademoiselle?" asked the old gentleman, raising his hat and standing uncovered before Eloise.

But I had no need to introduce my companion. La Perouse (oh, what a voice she had! Hard, metallic, shallow, low)—La Perouse, with a little shriek of recognition, cried out: "Marie! Why, it is Marie!"

Then she kissed her, and I could have struck her on the beautiful mouth, whose voice was a voice of brass, for innocence told me she was bad, and part of Eloise's wretched past.

Ah, me! If an eclipse had come over the sun, the beauty of the day could not have been more spoilt, the loveliness of spring more ruined.

The stout servant-men, with the dexterity of conjurers, unpacked the great basket, spread a wide cloth, and, in a trice, a luncheon was spread out to which the Emperor himself might have sat down.

There was no resisting M. le Vicomte. We had to sit down with the rest, and make a pretence to eat.

But Eloise refused wine, as did I.

"Ma foi!" said La Perouse. "What airs! Good champagne, too. Come, taste."

"Mademoiselle prefers water," I put in; and then, unwisely: "She is not accustomed to wine."

La Perouse stared at me, champagne-glass in hand, and then broke out laughing. She was about to say something, but checked herself, and turned to the chicken on her plate.

But La Perouse, as the champagne worked in her wits, returned to the subject of Eloise's abstinence.

In that dull brain was moving a resentment which the vulgar mind had not the power to repress.

"What! not drink champagne?" said the fool for the twentieth time. "Ah, well! It was different in the days of Changarnier. How is he, by the way, the brave Changarnier?"

I rose to my feet; and Eloise, as if moved by the same impulse, rose also.

"Mademoiselle," said I, as I offered Eloise my arm, "does not drink champagne. It is a matter of taste with her. Did she do so, however, I am very well assured that the evil spirit in it would never prompt her to talk and act like a fool!"

There was dead silence, as, with Eloise on my arm, I walked towards the trees. Then I heard the shrill laughter of the women; but I did not heed, for Eloise was weeping.

"Come," I said; "forget them."

"It is not they," replied Eloise. "I do not care about them."

I knew quite well what she meant. It was the Past.

Do not for a moment confuse that word "past" with conscience. Whatever sin might have been committed by the world against Eloise Feliciani, she, at heart, was sinless. No; it was just the Past, a blur of miasma from Paris, a breath of winter.

"Come," I said; "forget it! All that is a bad dream that you have dreamt; all those people, those women, those men, are not real: they are things in a nightmare; they have no souls, and when they die they go nowhere—they are just ugly pictures that God wipes off a slate. This is the real thing: these trees, these birds; and they are yours for ever. I give you them; they are the best gift that money can buy."

I wiped her eyes with my handkerchief. She smiled through her tears; and we pursued our way to the Pavilion, followed by the rustle of the wind in the leaves, and the song of the wood-doves—lazy, languorous, soothing—filled with the warmth and the softness of summer.

When I returned to Paris that night I sought for my guardian, and found him in the smoking-room.

Angry though I was with the trick he had played me, his manner was so bland and kind that I was at a loss how to begin.

He it was, indeed, who began by complimenting the beauty of Eloise, her grace and her modesty.

In fact, he had so much to say for her that I could not get in a word.

"All the same," finished he, "I do not quite see the future of this business. You offer Mademoiselle Feliciani a home, you provide for her, your intentions are absolutely honourable, yet you do not love her. That is all very well, mind you. It is somewhat strange in the eyes of the world, but I understand the position. You are a man of heart and honour, and she is, so to speak, an old friend; but what is to be the end of it?"

"I don't know," replied I.

"Just so. She is not a child. It is the nature of a woman to love, to enter into life. Picking daisies in the woods of SÉnart may fill a summer morning, but not a woman's life. I am not entirely destitute of the gift of appreciation, the poetry of things is not yet dead for me, and I can see, my dear Patrique, the poetry of two young people, each half a child, playing at childhood. But the garment of a child, beautiful in itself, becomes ridiculous when you dress a man in it. Impossible, in fact. In fact," finished the old gentleman, suddenly dropping metaphor and using his stabbing spear, "you are getting yourself into a position that you cannot escape from with honour; for even if you wish you cannot marry this girl, for the simple reason that Paris would not receive her as your wife."

"I do not wish to marry Mademoiselle Feliciani," replied I, "nor does she dream of marrying me. I found her in wretchedness; I rescued her. I loved her as a friend. Have men and women no hearts but that they must sneer at what is natural and good? What is the barrier that divides a man from a woman so that comradeship seems impossible between them, simplicity, and all good feeling, including Christian charity?"

"Sex," replied M. le Vicomte de Chatellan.