She looked at him with a curious, gentle wistfulness on her lovely face.

“Monsieur, it is not you whom I doubt.  It is myself.”

“You mean your feelings towards me?”

“Yes.”

“But that I can understand.  After what has happened... "

“It was always so, monsieur,” she interrupted quietly.  “You speak of me as if lost to you by your own action.  That is to say too much.  Let me be frank with you.  Monsieur, I was never yours to lose.  I am conscious of the honour that you do me.  I esteem you very deeply... "

“But, then,” he cried, on a high note of confidence, “from such a beginning... "

“Who shall assure me that it is a beginning?  May it not be the whole?  Had I held you in affection, monsieur, I should have sent for you after the affair of which you have spoken.  I should at least not have condemned you without hearing your explanation.  As it was... " She shrugged, smiling gently, sadly.  “You see... "

But his optimism far from being crushed was stimulated.  “But it is to give me hope, mademoiselle.  If already I possess so much, I may look with confidence to win more.  I shall prove myself worthy.  I swear to do that.  Who that is permitted the privilege of being near you could do other than seek to render himself worthy?”

And then before she could add a word, M. de Kercadiou came blustering through the window, his spectacles on his forehead, his face inflamed, waving in his hand “The Acts of the Apostles,” and apparently reduced to speechlessness.

Had the Marquis expressed himself aloud he would have been profane.  As it was he bit his lip in vexation at this most inopportune interruption.

Aline sprang up, alarmed by her uncle’s agitation.

“What has happened?”

“Happened?” He found speech at last.  “The scoundrel!  The faithless dog!  I consented to overlook the past on the clear condition that he should avoid revolutionary politics in future.  That condition he accepted, and now” — he smacked the news-sheet furiously — “he has played me false again.  Not only has he gone into politics, once more, but he is actually a member of the Assembly, and what is worse he has been using his assassin’s skill as a fencing-master, turning himself into a bully-swordsman.  My God!  Is there any law at all left in France?”

One doubt M. de La Tour d’Azyr had entertained, though only faintly, to mar the perfect serenity of his growing optimism.  That doubt concerned this man Moreau and his relations with M. de Kercadiou.  He knew what once they had been, and how changed they subsequently were by the ingratitude of Moreau’s own behavior in turning against the class to which his benefactor belonged.  What he did not know was that a reconciliation had been effected.  For in the past month — ever since circumstances had driven Andre-Louis to depart from his undertaking to steer clear of politics — the young man had not ventured to approach Meudon, and as it happened his name had not been mentioned in La Tour d’Azyr’s hearing on the occasion of either of his own previous visits.  He learnt of that reconciliation now; but he learnt at the same time that the breach was now renewed, and rendered wider and more impassable than ever.  Therefore he did not hesitate to avow his own position.