"He is dead," said Dr. Pons.

I looked at the rapier in my hand. There were a few contracting spots on it.

Then De Brissac held my coat for me.

"His foot slipped, or you would not have got him like that," I heard him say.

"Oh, it is unpleasant enough, but the thing is perfectly in order. You need have no fear. Yes, yes; I will lead you to her. You will be at the Place VendÔme, I suppose? There will be an inquiry, and all that."

And then I found myself holding again the two warm hands. I was not thinking of De Coigny. I was in a dream. I stepped into a carriage that was before me. I heard De Brissac close the door, and say to the coachman "Paris." Then I felt a girl's arm round my neck.

"Toto," said a voice, "do you remember the white rabbit with the green eyes?"

The killing of De Coigny had blinded me, maddened me, and drawn from some distant past into full birth all sorts of strange and hitherto unknown attributes of myself.

It was as though Philippe de Saluce, slowly struggling into new birth during the last forty-eight hours, had, with the slaying of my adversary, suddenly become full born.

It was necessary for me to kill, it seems, before he could find speech and thought, and stand fully reincarnated.

"Oh, far beyond that—far beyond that!" I murmured, not knowing fully what I said or what I meant, knowing only that mysterious doors had been flung open, and that through them a spirit had rushed, filling me and embracing through me the woman at my side.

"I know," she said. And for a moment spoke no more.

In those two words she told all. It was as though she had said: "I know all. You are Philippe and I am Margaret. All is forgiven between us. Let us forget. What matters that old crime of long ago? We are reborn, we are young again, and the world is fair."

"Let us forget," I murmured, as if in answer to these words which, though unspoken by her lips, were heard by my spirit.

"I have forgotten," she replied. "I never remembered—or only in part. Let us talk of that time——"

"When we were children?"

"Yes. Do you remember——"

"Do I remember! Where is Gretel?"

"She is dead. I must tell you all; but we are nearing Paris. Cannot we go anywhere—some place where we can talk and be alone?"

"Yes." I remembered that Franzius and Eloise were away, and that we could go to the Pavilion. I drew the check-string, and told the driver to take the road to Etiolles.

As I drew back into the carriage her hand slipped over my shoulder, and her arm round my neck again.

* * * * *

"You know," she said, "that time when you left I nearly forgot you. I would have forgotten you entirely but for Gretel, who always kept making me remember, telling me to beware of you, till you became my nightmare. After the death of my father, Gretel took entire charge of me. I did not know that I was a girl: I never thought of the thing. I was dressed as a boy, I had tutors, the jÄgers took me hunting. Yes; you were my nightmare. I used to dream that you were running after me through the woods to kill me. All that was at night; but once—one afternoon, I fell asleep, and you nearly did kill me. It was only a dream, you know."

"Tell me about it."

"I was walking through a wood, and you were following to kill me, and I hid behind some bushes. But you saw me, and came after me, and I heard you falling into a pit. I looked into the pit, and you were lying there. Then I awoke."

"Go on—go on! Tell me about yourself. Don't say any more about that."

"Ah, yes, myself! Well, I grew up. Gretel died three years ago; and when she was dying she told me I was a girl. She told me all, and gave me the choice of going through life as what I am now, or as a man."

"And you?"

"Chose to be a man." She laughed deliciously, and under her breath. "These things"—and she plucked at her dress—"feel strange on me even now. Oh, yes, I chose to be a man. Who would not, if the choice were given them? And no one knew. The Baron Carl von Lichtenberg was quite a great person. He was admired by all the ladies. He was so ornamental that he was sent as attachÉ to the Embassy at Paris. Yes; and he went to the ball at the Marquis d'Harmonville's——"

"Ah, that night!" I muttered. "It was the beginning——"

"Of your tribulations," she laughed softly, and went on: "When I saw you I was nearly as startled as you were yourself. I had all my life determined that I would avoid you; but that night—ah! that night——"

"Well?"

"I don't know. I could not sleep. I cursed my man's clothes; and I would have given all I possessed to speak to you dressed as I am now. Then I sought you, and you avoided me. You insulted me, monsieur, at the Mirlitons."

"Ah! why—why did you not declare yourself then?" I muttered, speaking into the warmth of her delicious neck. "Think what we have lost—a whole year nearly of life and love!"

"Why, indeed! Just, I suppose, because I was a woman, filled with a woman's caprice; and the masquerade amused me, and I had my duties to perform—and how you evaded me! I was invited to meet you at dinner——"

"And I dined at the CafÉ de Paris with a fool."

"Just so. And you ran away to Nice. Then the idea came to me—ah, yes, it was a fine idea!—I will make him meet me. And I slapped you on the shoulder with a glove."

"Yes; when I was seated in the box at the opera with a lady."

"Yes. Who was the lady? I was too excited to see anyone but you."

"She was——" Then I paused. And then I said—why, I can never tell—"She was a friend of my guardian."

"Next morning I received your challenge. How I laughed to myself!"

"But tell me one thing. Why did you stipulate for a delay of three months before the duel?"

She laughed again.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes."

"Because I wanted time—to—to——"

"Yes?"

"To let my hair grow. Do you like it?" She drew a long pin from her hat, removed her hat, and showed her perfect head and the coils of night-black hair.

"Oh! Do I like it?"

"Well—kiss it."

* * * * *

"We must never part again."

"We need never," said she. "I am yours. I am not existent in the world. The Baron Carl von Lichtenberg is dead: he died when I put on these things. There is no one to trouble us!"

"Look!" I said. "This is Etiolles."

* * * * *

I had as completely forgotten Franzius and Eloise as though they had never existed. Madame Ancelot seemed strange; and the Pavilion a place which I recognised, but which had no part in my new life.

Sitting opposite to my companion at table—for we had a dÉjeÛner under the big chestnut-tree—I could contemplate her at my leisure. Surely God had never created a more lovely and perfect woman. Eyelashes long and black, up curved, and tipped with brown; violet-grey eyes. Ah, yes; I do not care to think of them now. I only care to remember that voice and smile, that ineffable expression, all that told of the existence of the beautiful spirit that Time might never touch nor Death destroy.

From the forest came the wood-doves' song to the immortal and ever-weeping Susie. We could hear the birds in the chÂteau gardens, and a bell from some village church ringing the Angelus—faint, far away, robbed of its harshness by the vast and sunlit silence. She seemed the soul of all that music, all that silence, all that sweetness; and she was mine, entirely and for ever. We were beyond convention and law, as were Adam and Eve.

"And you know," said she, as if reading my thoughts, "I am nobody—I have not even a name. Yesterday I was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg, with great estates. Now, who am I? And my great estates——" She opened a purse, in which lay a few louis. "Here they are."

I laughed, and put the little purse into my pocket.

"Tell me," I said; "where were you when you were coming out of your chrysalis? When you were changing—all these three months?"

"I—I was at Tours. The Baron von Lichtenberg received three months' foreign leave, and went to Tours. Oh, the complications! And the dressmakers! I did not even know at first how to wear these things. Do they fit me?"

"Do they fit you!"

I rose, and we crossed the drawbridge. As she passed over it, she paused and gazed at the water.

"How cool it looks! How dark and deep! Do you remember the pool at Lichtenberg?"

"And how I pushed you in. Do you remember the little drum?"

"And the child with the golden hair—Eloise. She called you Toto. I have always called you Toto since, M. Patrick Mahon."

"Call me it still," I said. "I love anything that reminds me of my past—of our past. Come, let us go into the woods, as we went that day."

She laughed at the recollection of the little Pomeranian grenadier.

"We were children then," said she.

I looked at her. In the shadow of the trees, in the broad drive where we stood, she might have been a ghost from that time when La ValliÈre was a girl, when La Fontaine was a man, and Monsieur Fouquet held his court at Vaux.

Though of the fashion of the day, her dress had that grace which the wearer alone can give; and, as I looked at her, the forest sighed deeply from its cool, green heart, the boughs tossed, showering lights upon us, and the laughter of the birds followed the wind.

"We were children then," said I, "but we are not children now." I took both her hands, and held her soul to mine for a moment in a kiss that has not ended yet.

* * * * *

Where the beech-glades give place to the tall pines—the fragrant pines, whose song sounds for ever like the sea on a distant strand—we sat down on a bank, which in spring would be mist-blue with violets.

"I have never kissed anyone before. Have you?" she asked.

"No one."

"Never loved anyone?" She rested her hands on my shoulders, and looked into my eyes.

"Never."

"For," said she, "if you had——"

"Yes?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I do not know my own thoughts. Sometimes I act and do things that seem strange to me afterwards. I made you meet me this morning out of caprice. I teased you, following you as I did to Nice, dressed as I was, from caprice. That is not me. There is something wicked and wayward in me that I cannot understand. Had it not been for me you would not have killed that man this morning."

I had not thought of De Coigny till now; and the remembrance of him lying there dead in the arms of Dr. Pons came like a gloomy stain across my mind. But it soon passed.

"We would have fought in any case," said I, "inevitably."

She sighed, as if relieved.

"He was a bad man," she said. "He deserved to die for the things he said about you to me. It was partly on that account that I arranged all that this morning, so that I might insult him before those men; but I never thought it would end as it did."

"Do you know," said I, "when I killed him it was as if the blood which I shed had baptised me into a new life! My full love for you only awoke then. It was as if some spirit out of the past that had loved you for ages had suddenly been born completely."

"Don't!" she said. "I hate to think of that. Let the past be gone for ever. You are yourself, alive and warm. You are my sun, my life, the air I breathe. You have been kept for me untouched. Oh, how I love you!

"Listen!" she said, freeing her lips from mine, and casting her beautiful eyes upwards. "No; it is not the wind. Ah! listen! listen!"

From the trees came a sound that was not the voice of the birds. Far away it seemed now, and now near. It was the spinning-song of Oberthal, that tune, thin as a thread of flax, rising, falling, poignant as Fate, and filled with the story of man—his swaddling-clothes, his marriage-bed, and his shroud.

There, amidst the trees, coming from nowhere, diffused by the echoes of the wood—for a wood is a living echo—heard just then, the song of Oberthal seemed the voice of Fate herself.

I knew quite well what had happened. Franzius had returned. Madame Ancelot had told him that I was in the wood. Wishing, no doubt, to find me, he had sent the tune to look for me—the old tune that he knew I liked so well.

It was then only that my past relationship with Eloise rose before me.

I had said nothing about it; I had even refrained from mentioning her name. I had done this from no ulterior motive. I was not ashamed that the woman I loved should know about Eloise. Had I not brought her to the Pavilion when it was quite possible that Eloise might have returned? Up to this my mind had been so filled with new things, so filled with happiness and extraordinary love, that all things earthly were for me not.

"It is a friend of mine, I think," said I. "A violinist. He stays at the Pavilion. And now I want to tell you something."

"Yes?"

It had seemed so easy, yet now it seemed very difficult.

"I told you I had never cared for another woman."

"Yes."

"Listen! The tune has ceased. Well, there has been only one woman in my life till I met you. You remember little Eloise at Lichtenberg, she who called me Toto?"

"Yes." She had placed her hand to her heart, as though she felt a pain there.

"Well, I met her again in Paris. She had grown up. She was very poor, and I gave her the Pavilion to live in. She is living there now."

"Now!"

"Yes," said I, laughing. "And, see, there she is. Wait for me."

Franzius and Eloise had just appeared from the wood away down the drive. It was fortunate that Franzius was with her, for now I could bring them both up and introduce them. Their love for one another and their happiness was so evident that it would be an explanation in itself.

I ran towards them.

Eloise was radiant; Franzius as brown as a berry.

"Eloise!" I cried, as I kissed her and wrung both her hands, "do you remember little Carl? Do you remember saying to me: 'Toto, little Carl is a girl'? She is here; she is waiting to meet you. Come."

"Where?" asked Eloise.

I turned, laughing, to point out the figure of my companion. The drive was empty. The songs of the birds, the shadows of the trees, the golden swathes of light, were there, but of Margaret von Lichtenberg there was no trace.

"She has hidden herself amidst the trees," I cried. "Come."

But there was no trace of her amidst the trees.

"Margaret!"

I was frightened at my own voice, at its ghostliness, and the echo of the sweet name that came back from the wood.

A wreath of morning mist could not have vanished more completely.

I am sure that just then the Franzius' must have thought me mad.