cques!"  Her voice was steady now  that  the  need for
self-control seemed thrust upon her. She advanced from the shadows into that
island of light about the table. "There  is a  man below. He is asking... he
is demanding to see you at once."
     "A man?" she questioned.
     "He...  he seems  to  be an  official; at least  he  wears the sash  of
office. And he refuses to give any name; he says that  his name would convey
nothing to you. He insists that he must see you in person and at once."
     "An official?" said madame.
     "An  official," Jacques repeated. "I  would not  have admitted him, but
that he demanded it  in the name of the Nation. Madame, it is for you to say
what  shall be done.  Robert is  with me. If you wish it... whatever it  may
be... "
     "My good  Jacques,  no,  no." She was  perfectly composed. If  this man
intended  evil, surely he  would not come alone. Conduct him to me, and then
beg Mlle. de Kercadiou to join me if she is awake."
     Jacques departed, himself partly  reassured. Madame  seated herself  in
the armchair by the table well within the light. She smoothed her dress with
a mechanical  hand. If, as it would seem, her  hopes had been futile, so had
her momentary fears. A  man on any but an errand of peace would have brought
some following with him, as she had said.
     The door  opened  again, and  Jacques reappeared;  after  him, stepping
briskly past him,  came a slight  man in a  wide-brimmed  hat,  adorned by a
tricolour cockade. About the waist of  an olive-green riding-coat  he wore a
broad tricolour sash; a sword hung at his side.
     He swept  off his hat, and the candlelight glinted on the  steel buckle
in front of it. Madame found  herself silently regarded  by a pair of large,
dark eyes set in a lean,  brown face, eyes  that were most singularly intent
and searching.
     She leaned  forward, incredulity swept across her countenance. Then her
eyes kindled, and the  colour came creeping back into her  pale  cheeks. She
rose suddenly. She was trembling.
     "Andre-Louis!" she exclaimed.

        CHAPTER XIV. THE BARRIERIV


     That  gift  of laughter of his  seemed  utterly  extinguished. For once
there  was no  gleam of humour in those  dark  eyes, as  they  continued  to
consider her with that queer stare of scrutiny. And yet, though his gaze was
sombre, his  thoughts were not. With his  cruelly true  mental vision  which
pierced through shams,  and his capacity  for  detached  observation - which
properly applied might have carried him very far, indeed -  he perceived the
grotesqueness,  the artificiality  of  the emotion  which in that  moment he
experienced, but by  which he refused to be  possessed. It  sprang  entirely
from  the  consciousness  that  she  was  his  mother;  as  if,  all  things
considered, the more or less accidental fact that she had brought  him  into
the world could establish between them any real bond  at this time  of  day!
The  motherhood that  bears  and  forsakes  is  less  than  animal.  He  had
considered  this; he had  been given ample leisure in  which  to consider it
during those long, turbulent  hours in which  he had  been forced  to  wait,
because it  would  have  been  almost  impossible  to  have won across  that
seething city, and certainly unwise to have attempted so to do.
     He had reached the conclusion that by consenting to go to her rescue at
such  a time he stood committed to  a piece of purely sentimental  quixotry.
The  quittances which the  Mayor  of Meudon had  exacted from  him before he
would  issue  the  necessary safe-conducts placed the  whole of  his future,
perhaps  his very life, in jeopardy. And he had consented to do this not for
the  sake of a reality, but out of regard  for an idea - he who all his life
had avoided the false lure of worthless and hollow sentimentality.
     Thus  thought  Andre-Louis as  he  considered  her now  so searchingly,
finding  it,  naturally enough, a matter  of extraordinary interest  to look
consciously  upon  his   mother  for   the   first  time  at   the   age  of
eight-and-twenty.
     >From her he  looked at  last  at Jacques,  who  remained at attention,
waiting by the open door.
     "Could we be alone, madame?" he asked her.
     She waved the footman  away,  and the door closed. In agitated silence,
unquestioning, she waited for  him to  account for his presence there at  so
extraordinary a time.
     "Rougane  could  not  return,"  he  informed  her  shortly.  At  M.  de
Kercadiou's request, I come instead."
     "You! You  are sent to  rescue us!" The  note of amazement in her voice
was stronger than that of het relief.
     "That, and to make your acquaintance, madame."
     "To make my acquaintance? But what do you mean, Andre-Louis?"
     "This letter from M. de Kercadiou will tell you." Intrigued  by his odd
words and odder manner, she took the folded  sheet. She broke the  seal with
shaking  hands,  and with shaking hands  approached the  written page to the
light.  Her  eyes  grew  troubled as  she read;  the  shaking  of her  hands
increased,  and midway through  that reading a  moan escaped her. One glance
that  was almost terror  she  darted  at the slim, straight man  standing so
incredibly impassive upon the edge of the light, and then she endeavoured to
read on. But the  crabbed characters  of  M.  de  Kercadiou swam distortedly
under her eyes. She could not read. Besides, what could  it matter what else
he  said.  She had read  enough. The sheet fluttered  from  her hands to the
table, and out of a face that was like a face of wax, she looked now with  a
wistfulness, a sadness indescribable, at Andre-Louis.
     "And so you know, my child?" Her voice was stifled to a whisper.
     "I know, madame my mother."
     The  grimness, the subtle blend  of merciless  derision and reproach in
which it was uttered completely escaped her.  She cried out at the new name.
For  her in that moment  time and the  world stood still. Her peril there in
Paris as the wife of an intriguer at Coblenz was  blotted out, together with
every other consideration
     - thrust  out of a consciousness that could  find room for nothing else
beside  the fact that she  stood  acknowledged  by her only son,  this child
begotten in  adultery,  borne  furtively  and in shame in a  remote Brittany
village eight-and-twenty  years ago. Not even a thought for  the betrayal of
that inviolable secret, or the con-  sequences  that might follow, could she
spare in this supreme moment.
     She took  one or two faltering  steps towards him, hesitating. Then she
opened her arms. Sobs suffocated her voice.
     "Won't you come to me, Andre-Louis?"
     A  moment  yet he  stood hesitating,  startled by that  appeal, angered
almost by his heart's response to it, reason and sentiment at  grips  in his
soul. This  was not real, his reason postulated; this poignant  emotion that
she displayed and that he experienced was fantastic. Yet  he went.  Her arms
enfolded him; her wet cheek was  pressed hard against  his  own;  her frame,
which the years had not yet succeeded in robbing of its grace, was shaken by
the passionate storm within her.
     "Oh, Andre-Louis, my child, if you knew how I have hungered to hold you
so! If  you knew  how in denying myself  this I have  atoned  and  suffered!
Kercadiou should  not  have told you  -  not even now. It  was wrong  - most
wrong, perhaps, to you. It would  have  been better that he should have left
me here to my fate, whatever that may be. And  yet - come what may of this -
to be able to hold you  so, to be able to acknowledge you, to hear you  call
me mother -  oh! Andre-Louis, I cannot now regret it.  I cannot...  I cannot
wish it otherwise."
     "Is there any need,  madame?" he asked her, his stoicism deeply shaken.
"There  is  no  occasion  to take  others into  our confidence. This is  for
to-night  alone. To-night  we are mother and  son. To-morrow we  resume  our
former places, and, outwardly at least, forget."
     "Forget? Have you no heart, Andre-Louis?"
     The question recalled him curiously to his attitude towards life
     - that histrionic attitude of his that  he accounted  true  philosophy.
Also he remembered what lay before them; and he realized that he must master
not only himself  but her; that to yield too far to sentiment at such a time
might be the ruin of them all.
     "It is a question  propounded to me so often that it  must  contain the
truth," said he. "My rearing is to blame for that."
     She tightened her clutch about his neck even as he would have attempted
to disengage himself from her embrace.
     "You do  not  blame  me  for your  rearing? Knowing  all,  as  you  do,
Andre-Louis, you cannot altogether  blame. You  must be merciful to me.  You
must forgive me. You must! I had no choice."
     "When  we know all of whatever it  may be, we can never do anything but
forgive, madame. That  is the  profoundest  religious  truth  that  was ever
written. It contains, in fact, a whole religion -  the  noblest religion any
man could have to guide him. I say this for your comfort, madame my mother."
     She sprang away from him with a startled cry. Beyond him in the shadows
by the door a pale figure shimmered ghostly. It advanced into the light, and
resolved itself into Aline. She had come in answer to that forgotten summons
madame  had  sent  her  by  Jacques.   Entering  unperceived  she  had  seen
Andre-Louis in the embrace of the woman whom  he addressed as  "mother." She
had recognized him  instantly by his voice, and she could not have said what
bewildered her more: his presence there or the thing she overheard.
     "You heard, Aline?" madame exclaimed.
     "I could not help it, madame. You sent  for me. I am  sorry if... " She
broke off, and  looked at Andre-Louis  long and curiously. She was pale, but
quite composed. She held out her hand to him. "And so you have come at last,
Andre," said she. "You might have come before."
     "I come when I am  wanted,"  was his answer. "Which is the only time in
which one can be sure of being received." He said it without bitterness, and
having said it stooped to kiss her hand.
     "You can  forgive  me  what is past,  I  hope,  since  I  failed of  my
purpose,"  he said gently, half-pleading.  "I  could  not  have come to  you
pretending  that  the  failure  was intentional - a  compromise between  the
necessities of the case and your own wishes.  For  it was not that. And yet,
you do not seem to have profited by my failure. You are still a maid."
     She turned her shoulder to him.
     "There are things," she said, "that you will never understand."
     "Life, for one,"  he  acknowledged.  "I confess that  I am  finding  it
bewildering. The  very  explanations calculated  to simplify it  seem but to
complicate it further." And he looked at Mme. de Plougastel.
     "You mean something, I suppose," said mademoiselle.
     "Aline!"  It was  the  Countess  who  spoke. She  knew  the  danger  of
half-discoveries.  "I can  trust you, child, I know,  and Andre-Louis, I  am
sure, will offer  no objection." She had  taken up the letter  to show it to
Aline. Yet first her eyes questioned him.
     "Oh, none,  madame," he  assured  her.  "It  is  entirely a matter  for
yourself."
     Aline looked from  one to the  other with troubled  eyes, hesitating to
take the  letter that was  now  proffered. When she had read it through, she
very  thoughtfully replaced it on  the table. A moment  she stood there with
bowed head,  the other two watching her. Then impulsively  she ran to madame
and put her arms about her.
     "Aline!"  It  was  a cry of wonder, almost of joy. "You do  not utterly
abhor me!"
     "My dear," said  Aline, and kissed the tear-stained face that seemed to
have grown years older in these last few hours.
     In the  background Andre-Louis,  steeling himself against emotionalism,
spoke with the voice of Scaramouche.
     "It would be well, mesdames, to  postpone all transports until they can
be indulged at greater leisure and in more security. It is growing late.  If
we  are to get out  of this shambles we  should  be  wise  to take  the road
without more delay."
     It was a tonic as effective as  it was necessary. It startled them into
remembrance of  their circumstances, and under the spur of it  they went  at
once to make their preparations.
     They left  him for perhaps a quarter of an hour, to pace that long room
alone, saved only from impatience by the turmoil of his mind. When at length
they returned, they were  accompanied by a tall man in a full-skirted shaggy
greatcoat  and a broad  hat the brim of which was turned down all around. He
remained respectfully by the door in the shadows.
     Between them  the  two women  had  concerted  it thus,  or  rather  the
Countess had so  concerted  it when Aline  had  warned her that Andre-Louis'
bitter hostility towards the Marquis made it unthinkable that he should move
a finger consciously to save him.
     Now despite the close friendship uniting M. de Kercadiou  and his niece
with Mme. de Plougastel, there were several matters concerning them of which
the  Countess was in ignorance.  One  of these was the project  at one  time
existing of a  marriage between Aline and M. de  La  Tour d'Azyr. It  was  a
matter that Aline  -  naturally enough in the state of  her  feelings -  had
never mentioned, nor had M. de Kercadiou ever alluded to it since his coming
to Meudon, by when he had perceived how unlikely it was ever to be realized.
     M. de La Tour  d'Azyr's concern for Aline  on  that morning of the duel
when  he had found  her  baif-swooning in Mme. de Plougastel's  carriage had
been of a circumspection that betrayed  nothing of his real interest in her,
and  therefore had  appeared  no more than natural in  one who  must account
himself  the cause of her  distress.  Similarly Mme. de Plougastel had never
realized nor did she  realize  now  -  for Aline  did not  trouble fully  to
enlighten her  -  that the hostility between  the two  men  was  other  than
political,  the  quarrel other than that which already had taken Andre-Louis
to the Bois on  every day of the preceding week. But, at least, she realized
that even if  Andre-Louis' rancour  should have no other  source,  yet  that
inconclusive duel was cause enough for Aline's fears.
     And so she had proposed this obvious deception; and Aline had consented
to  be  a  passive  party  to  it.  They  had made the  mistake of not fully
forewarning and persuading M. de La Tour d'Azyr.  They had  trusted entirely
to his  anxiety to escape from  Paris to keep  him rigidly  within the  part
imposed upon him. They had reckoned  without the queer sense  of honour that
moved such men as M. le Marquis, nurtured upon a code of shams.
     Andre-Louis,  turning  to  scan that muffled  figure, advanced from the
dark  depths of  the salon.  As  the light  beat on his white, lean face the
pseudo-footman  started.  The next  moment  he too stepped forward into  the
light,  and swept  his  broad-brimmed  hat  from  his  brow.  As  he did  so
Andre-Louis observed  that  his  hand  was  fine and white  and that a jewel
flashed from one of the fingers. Then he caught his breath, and stiffened in
every line as he recognized the face revealed to him.
     "Monsieur," that stern, proud man was saying, "I cannot  take advantage
of your ignorance. If these ladies can persuade you  to save me, at least it
is due to you that you shall know whom you are saving."
     He stood there by  the table  very erect and dignified, ready to perish
as he had lived - if perish he must - without fear and without deception.
     Andre-Louis came slowly forward until he reached the table on the other
side, and then at last the muscles of his set face relaxed, and he laughed.
     "You laugh?" said M. de La Tour dAzyr, frowning, offended.
     "It is so damnably amusing," said Andre-Louis.
     "You've an odd sense of humour, M. Moreau."
     "Oh, admitted. The unexpected always moves me so. I have found you many
things in the course of our acquaintance. To-night  you are the  one thing I
never expected to find you: an honest man."
     M. de La Tour d'Azyr quivered. But he attempted no reply.
     "Because of that, monsieur, I am disposed to be clement. It is probably
a foolishness. But you have surprised me  into it. I give you three minutes,
monsieur,  in which to leave this house, and to  take  your own measures for
your safety. What afterwards happens to you shall be no concern of mine.
     "Ah, no, Andre! Listen... " Madame began in anguish.
     "Pardon, madame.  It  is the utmost that I  will do, and  already I  am
violating what I conceive to be my duty. If M.  de La Tour d'Azyr remains he
not  only ruins himself, but he imperils you. For unless he departs at once,
he goes with  me to the  headquarters of the section,  and the section  will
have  his   head  on   a   pike   inside  the   hour.  He   is  a  notorious
counter-revolutionary,  a  knight  of  the  dagger, one  of  those  whom  an
exasperated  populace is determined to exterminate.  Now, monsieur, you know
what awaits you. Resolve yourself and at once, for these ladies' sake."
     "But you don't know, Andre-Louis!" Mme.  de  Plougastel's condition was
one of anguish indescribable. She came to him and clutched his arm. "For the
love of Heaven, Andre-Louis, be merciful with him! You must!"
     "But that is what I am being, madame - merciful; more merciful than  he
deserves. And  he knows it. Fate has meddled most oddly  in  our concerns to
bring us together to-night. Almost it is as if Fate were forcing retribution
at last upon him. Yet, for your sakes, I take no advantage  of it,  provided
that he does at once as I have desired him."
     And now  from beyond the table the Marquis spoke icily, and as he spoke
his right hand stirred under the ample folds of his greatcoat.
     "I am glad,  M. Moreau, that you take that tone with me. You relieve me
of the last scruple. You  spoke of Fate just  now, and I must agree with you
that Fate has meddled oddly, though perhaps not to the end that you discern.
For  years now  you  have chosen to stand in my path and  thwart me at every
turn, holding over  me a perpetual menace.  Persistently  you have sought my
life  in  various  ways,  first  indirectly  and  at  last  directly.   Your
intervention in my affairs has ruined my highest hopes -  more  effectively,
perhaps, than you  suppose. Throughout you have been my evil genius. And you
are even one  of the agents of this climax of despair that  has been reached
by me to-night."
     "Wait! Listen!" Madame was panting. She flung away from Andre-Louis, as
if  moved  by  some  premonition  of  what  was coming.  "Gervais!  This  is
horrible!"
     "Horrible, perhaps, but inevitable. Himself he has invited it. I  am  a
man  in despair,  the  fugitive of a lost cause. That  man holds the keys of
escape. And, besides, between him and me there is a reckoning to be paid."
     His hand  came from beneath the coat at  last, and it came armed with a
pistol.
     Mme. de  Plougastel screamed, and flung herself upon  him. On her knees
now, she clung to his arm with all her strength and might.
     Vainly he sought to shake himself free of that desperate clutch.
     "Therese!"  he cried. "Are you mad? Will you destroy me  and  yourself?
This creature has the safe-conducts that mean  our salvation. Himself, he is
nothing."
     >From the background Aline, a breathless,  horror-stricken spectator of
that  scene,  spoke  sharply,  her  quick  mind  pointing  out  the  line of
checkmate.
     "Burn  the  safe-conducts,  Andre-Louis.  Burn them  at once -  in  the
candles there."
     But  Andre-Louis  had taken advantage of that moment of  M. de La  Tour
d'Azyr's impotence to draw a pistol in his turn. "T think it will be  better
to burn his brains instead," he said. "Stand away from him, madame."
     Far from obeying that imperious command, Mme. de Plougastel rose to her
feet to  cover the Marquis with  her body. But she still clung to  his  arm,
clung  to  it with unsuspected strength  that continued to prevent  him from
attempting to use the pistol.
     "Andre! For God's sake, Andre!" she panted hoarsely over her shoulder.
     "Stand away, madame," he commanded her  again, more  sternly, "and  let
this murderer  take his due. He is jeopardizing  all our lives,  and his own
has been forfeit these years. Stand away!" He sprang forward with intent now
to fire at his enemy over her shoulder, and Aline moved too  late  to hinder
him.
     "Andre! Andre!"
     Panting, gasping, haggard of face, on the verge almost of hysteria, the
distracted Countess flung at last  an effective,  a terrible barrier between
the hatred of those men, each intent upon taking the other's life.
     "He  is your  father, Andre!  Gervais,  he is  your son  - our son! The
letter there... on the  table... 0 my God!"  And she  slipped nervelessly to
the ground, and crouched there sobbing at the feet of M. de La Tour d'Azyr.

        CHAPTER XV. SAFE-CONDUCTV


     Across the body of  that  convulsively sobbing woman, the mother of one
and  the  mistress  of  the other, the  eyes  of those mortal  enemies  met,
invested with a startled, appalled interest that admitted of no words.
     Beyond the  table, as if turned  to stone by this culminating horror of
revelation, stood Aline.
     M.  de La Tour d'Azyr was the first  to stir. Into  his bewildered mind
came the memory of something  that Mme. de Plougastel had  said of  a letter
that was  on  the table. He came forward, unhindered. The announcement made,
Mme. de  Plougastel no longer feared the sequel, and  so she let him  go. He
walked unsteadily past this new-found son of his, and took up the sheet that
lay beside the candlebranch. A long moment he stood reading it, none heeding
him. Aline's eyes were all on Andre-Louis, full of wonder and commiseration,
whilst  Andre-Louis  was staring  down,  in stupefied  fascination,  at  his
mother.
     M. de La Tour d'Azyr  read the letter slowly through. Then very quietly
he  replaced it.  His next concern,  being  the product of an artificial age
sternly schooled in the suppression of emotion, was to compose himself. Then
he stepped back to Mme. de Plougastel's side and stooped to raise her.
     "Therese," he said.
     Obeying, by instinct, the  implied command, she made an effort  to rise
and to control herself in her turn. The Marquis half conducted, half carried
her to the armchair by the table.
     Andre-Louis looked on. Still numbed and bewildered, he made  no attempt
to assist. He saw as in a dream the Marquis bending over Mme. de Plougastel.
As in a dream he heard him ask:
     "How long have you known this, Therese?"
     "I... I have always known  it... always. I confided him to Kercadiou. I
saw him once as a child... Oh, but what of that?"
     "Why was I never told? Why did you deceive me? Why did you tell me that
this child had died a few days after birth? Why, Therese? Why?"
     "I was afraid.  I... I thought it better so - that nobody,  nobody, not
even you, should know. And nobody  has known save Quintin until  last night,
when to induce him to come here and save me he was forced to tell him."
     "But I, Therese?" the Marquis insisted. "It was my right to know."
     "Your right? What could you have done? Acknowledge him? And  then? Ha!"
It was a queer, desperate note of laughter. "There was Plougastel; there was
my  family. And there was you... you, yourself, who had ceased  to care,  in
whom the fear of  discovery had  stifled love. Why should I have  told  you,
then? Why? I should not have told you now had there been any other way to...
to save you both. Once before  I suffered just  such  dreadful apprehensions
when you and he fought in the Bois. I was on my  way to prevent  it when you
met me. I would have divulged the  truth, as a last  resource, to avert that
horror. But mercifully God spared me the necessity then."
     It  had not occurred to any of them  to doubt her statement, incredible
though it  might seem. Had  any done so her present words must have resolved
all doubt, explaining  as  they did  much that to each of her listeners  had
been obscure until this moment.
     M.  de La Tour d'Azyr, overcome; reeled  away to  a chair  and sat down
heavily. Losing command of himself for a moment, he took his haggard face in
his hands.
     Through the windows open to the garden came from the distance the faint
throbbing of  a drum to remind them  of what was happening  around them. But
the sound  went unheeded. To each  it  must  have seemed that here they were
face to face with a horror greater than any that might  be tormenting Paris.
At last Andre-Louis began to speak, his voice level and unutterably cold.
     "M. de La Tour d'Azyr," he said, "I trust  that you'll agree  that this
disclosure, which can hardly be more distasteful and horrible to you than it
is to  me, alters  nothing,  -  since  it effaces  nothing of all  that lies
between us. Or, if it alters anything, it is merely to add something to that
score. And yet... Oh, but what can it avail to  talk!  Here, monsieur,  take
this  safe-conduct which  is made  out for Mme. de Plougastel's footman, and
with it make your escape as  best you can. In  return I will beg of  you the
favour never to allow me to see you or hear of you again."
     "Andre!" His mother swung upon  him  with that cry. And yet  again that
question.  "Have you no heart? What has he ever  done to you that you should
nurse so bitter a hatred of him?"
     "You shall hear, madame. Once,  two years ago in this  very room I told
you of a man  who had  brutally killed my  dearest friend and  debauched the
girl I was to have married. M. de La Tour d'Azyr is that man."
     A moan was her only answer. She covered her face with her hands.
     The Marquis rose slowly to his feet again. He  came slowly forward, his
smouldering eyes scanning his son's face.
     "You  are  hard," he  said grimly. "But  I  recognize  the hardness. It
derives from the blood you bear."
     "Spare me that," said Andre-Louis.
     The  Marquis  inclined  his  head. "I will not mention it  again. But I
desire  that  you  should at least understand me, and you  too, Therese. You
accuse me, sir,  of  murdering  your  dearest friend. I  will admit that the
means  employed  were  perhaps  unworthy. But what other  means were  at  my
command to meet an urgency that every day since then proves to have existed?
M. de Vilmorin was a revolutionary, a man of new ideas that should overthrow
society  and rebuild  it  more  akin to  the desires of  such as himself.  I
belonged to the order that quite as justifiably desired society to remain as
it was. Not only was it better so for me and mine, but  I also contend,  and
you  have yet to  prove me wrong,  that  it is better so for  all the world;
that, indeed, no other conceivable society  is possible. Every human society
must  of  necessity  be  composed  of  several  strata. You may  disturb  it
temporarily into an amorphous  whole  by a revolution such as this; but only
temporarily. Soon out of the  chaos which is all that  you and your kind can
ever  produce,  order must  be  restored or life will  perish; and with  the
restoration of order comes the restoration of the various  strata  necessary
to organized  society. Those that were yesterday at  the top  may in the new
order of  things  find themselves  dispossessed without any benefit  to  the
whole. That  change I  resisted.  The spirit  of it I fought  with  whatever
weapons  were available,  whenever  and  wherever I encountered  it.  M.  de
Vilmorin was an incendiary  of the worst type,  a man of  eloquence full  of
false ideals that misled  poor ignorant men into believing  that the  change
proposed  could  make  the  world  a  better  place  for  them.  You  are an
intelligent man, and I defy you  to answer me from your heart and conscience
that such a thing was true or possible. You know that it is untrue; you know
that it is a pernicious doctrine;  and what made it worse  on the lips of M.
de Vilmorin was  that  he was sincere and eloquent. His  voice  was a danger
that must be  removed - silenced. So much  was necessary in self-defence. In
self-defence I did it. I had no grudge  against M. de Vilmorin. He was a man
of my own class; a gentleman of pleasant ways, amiable, estimable, and able.
     "You  conceive me slaying him  for the very lust  of slaying, like some
beast of the  jungle flinging  itself upon  its  natural prey. That has been
your  error from the first. I did  what I did with the very heaviest heart -
oh, spare me your sneer!  - I do not lie, I have never lied. And  I swear to
you here and now, by  my every hope of Heaven, that  what  I  say is true. I
loathed the thing I did. Yet for my own sake and the sake of my order I must
do it. Ask yourself whether M. de Vilmorin would have hesitated for a moment
if by procuring my death he  could  have  brought the Utopia of his dreams a
moment nearer realization.
     "After that. You determined  that the sweetest  vengeance would  be  to
frustrate my  ends by reviving in yourself the voice that I had silenced, by
yourself carrying forward the  fantastic apostleship of equality that was M.
de Vilmorin's. You lacked the vision that would have shown you that  God did
not create  men equals. Well, you are in case  to-night to judge which of us
was right,  which rong. You see what is happening here in Paris. You see the
foul spectre of  Anarchy  stalking through  a  land  fallen  into confusion.
Probably  you have enough  imagination to conceive  something of  what  must
follow.  And do you deceive  yourself that out of this filth and ruin  there
will  rise up an ideal form of  society? Don't you  understand  that society
must re-order itself presently out of all this?
     "But  why say  more? I must have said enough to make you understand the
only thing that really matters - that I killed M. de Vilmorin as a matter of
duty to my order. And the truth - which though it may offend you should also
convince you - is that to-night I can ook back  on the deed with equanimity,
without a single regret, apart from what lies between you and me.
     "When, kneeling beside  the body of your friend that day  at Gavrillac,
you insulted and  provoked me,  had I been the tiger you conceived me I must
have  killed you too. I am, as you  may know, a man of quick passions. Yet I
curbed  the natural anger  you aroused in  me,  because  I could  forgive an
affront to  myself where I could not overlook  a calculated  attack upon  my
order."
     He paused  a moment.  Andre-Louis stood  rigid listening and wondering.
So,  too, the  others.  Then M.  le  Marquis  resumed,  on  a note  of  less
assurance. "In the matter  of Mlle. Binet I was unfortunate. I  wronged  you
through inadvertence. I had no knowledge of the relations between you."
     Andre-Louis interrupted him 'sharply at last with a question: "Would it
have made a difference if you had?"
     "No," he was answered frankly. "I  have the faults of my kind. I cannot
pretend that any such scruple as you suggest would have weighed with me. But
can you  -  if you are capable of any detached judgment - blame me very much
for that?"
     "All  things  considered, monsieur, I  am  rapidly being forced  to the
conclusion  that it is impossible  to blame  any  man for anything  in  this
world; that we are all of us the sport  of destiny. Consider, monsieur, this
gathering - this family gathering - here to-night, whilst  out there... 0 my
God,  let us make  an  end! Let us  go our  ways and  write  'finis' to this
horrible chapter of our lives."
     M. le La Tour considered him gravely, sadly, in silence for a moment.
     "Perhaps it is best," he said,  at length, in a  small voice. He turned
to Mme. de  Plougastel. "If a wrong I have to admit in my life, a wrong that
I must bitterly  regret, it is the wrong that I have done to you, my dear...
"
     "Not now, Gervais! Not now!" she faltered, interrupting him.
     "Now - for  the first and the last time. I  am going. It  is not likely
that we shall ever meet again - that I shall ever see any of you again - you
who should have been the nearest and dearest to me. We are all, he says, the
sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving
with purpose. In life  we pay  for the evil  that in life we do. That is the
lesson that I have learnt to-night. By an act of betrayal I begot unknown to
me a son  who, whilst as ignorant as myself of our relationship, has come to
be the evil genius of my life,  to cross  and thwart me, and finally to help
to pull me down in ruin. It is just - poetically just. My  full and resigned
acceptance of that fact is the only atonement I can offer you."
     He stooped and took one of madame's hands that lay limply in her lap.
     "Good-bye, Therese!"  His voice broke. He  had reached the  end  of his
iron self-control.
     She rose and clung to him a moment, unashamed before them. The ashes of
that dead romance  had  been deeply  stirred this night, and deep  down some
lingering embers had been found that glowed brightly  now before their final
extinction. Yet she made no attempt to detain him. She understood that their
son had  pointed  out  the only  wise, the  only possible  course,  and  was
thankful that M. de La Tour d'Azyr accepted it.
     "God keep you, Gervais," she murmured. "You will take the safe-conduct,
and... and you will let me know when you are safe?"
     He held her face between his  hands an instant; then very gently kissed
her  and put her from him.  Standing  erect, and  outwardly calm  again,  he
looked across at Andre-Louis who was proffering him a sheet of paper.
     "It is  the  safe-conduct. Take it, monsieur. It is my first  and  last
gift  to you, and  certainly  the last  gift  I  should ever have thought of
making you - the gift of life. In a sense it makes us quits. The irony, sir,
is not mine, but Fate's. Take it, monsieur, and go in peace."
     M. de  La  Tour d'Azyr  took it. His eyes looked hungrily into the lean
face confronting him, so  sternly  set. He thrust the paper  into his bosom,
and then abruptly,  convulsively, held out  his hand. His son's eyes asked a
question.
     "Let there be  peace  between us,  in  God's  name," said  the  Marquis
thickly.
     Pity  stirred  at last  in Andre-Louis. Some of the  sternness left his
face. He sighed. "Good-bye, monsieur," he said.
     "You are hard," his  father told him, speaking  wistfully. "But perhaps
you are in  the  right so to be. In other  circumstances I should have  been
proud to have owned  you as my son. As it is... " He broke off abruptly, and
as abruptly added, "Good-bye."
     He loosed his son's hand and stepped back. They bowed formally  to each
other.  And then M. de La Tour d'Azyr bowed  to Mlle.  de Kercadiou in utter
silence, a bow that contained something of utter renunciation, of finality.
     That done he  turned and walked stiffly out of the  room, and so out of
all their lives. Months later they were to hear if him in the service of the
Emperor of Austria.

        CHAPTER XVI. SUNRISEVI


     Andre-Louis took the  air next  morning on  the terrace  at Meudon. The
hour was very early, and the newly risen  sun was transmuting  into diamonds
the dewdrops that still lingered on the lawn. Down in the valley, five miles
away, the  morning mists  were rising over  Paris. Yet  early as it was that
house  on the  hill  was astir already, in  a bustle of preparation  for the
departure that was imminent.
     Andre-Louis  had won safely out of Paris last night with his mother and
Aline, and to-day they were to set out all of them for Coblenz.
     To Andre-Louis, sauntering there with hands clasped behind him and head
hunched between his shoulders  -  for life had never been richer in material
for reflection  - came presently Aline through  one of  the glass doors from
the library.
     "You're early astir," she greeted him.
     "Faith,  yes. I haven't been to bed. No," he assured her, in answer  to
her exclamation.  "I spent  the night or what was left of it sitting at  the
window thinking."
     "My poor Andre!"
     "You describe  me  perfectly. I am  very  poor -  for  I know  nothing,
understand nothing. It  is  not a calamitous condition until it is realized.
Then...  "  He threw  out his  arms, and let them  fall again. His face  she
observed was very drawn and haggard.
     She paced with  him  along the old  granite balustrade over  which  the
geraniums flung their mantle of green and scarlet.
     "Have you decided what you are going to do?" she asked him.
     "I have  decided that I have no choice. I,  too, must  emigrate.  I  am
lucky to be able to do so, lucky to have found no one amid yesterday's chaos
in Paris to whom I could  report myself as I foolishly desired, else I might
no longer  be  armed  with these."  He  drew from  his  pocket  the powerful
passport of  the Commission of Twelve, enjoining upon all Frenchmen  to lend
him  such assistance as he  might require, and warning those who might think
of hindering him that they  did so  at their own  peril. He spread it before
her. "With this  I conduct you all safely to the frontier. Over the frontier
M. de Kercadiou and Mme. de Plougastel will have to conduct me; and then  we
shall be quits."
     "Quits?" quoth she. "But you will be unable to return!"
     "You  conceive, of course, my eagerness to do so. My child, in a day or
two there  will be enquiries. It will be asked what has become of me. Things
will transpire. Then the hunt will start. But by then we shall  be well upon
our way, well ahead of any possible pursuit. You don't  imagine that I could
ever give  the  government  any  satisfactory  explanation of  my absence  -
assuming that any government remains to which to explain it?"
     "You  mean...  that you  will sacrifice  your future,  this career upon
which you have embarked?" It took her breath away.
     "In the pass to which things have come there is no career for  me  down
there -  at least no honest one. And I hope you do not think that I could be
dishonest.  It is  the day of the  Dantons,  and the Marats,  the day of the
rabble. The reins of government will be tossed to the  populace, or else the
populace, drunk with the conceit with which the Dantons and  the Marats have
filled it, will seize the reins by force. Chaos must follow, and a despotism
of brutes and apes, a government of the whole by its lowest parts. It cannot
endure, because unless a nation is ruled by its best elements it must wither
and decay."
     "I thought you were a republican," said she.
     "Why, so I am. I am talking like one. I desire a society which  selects
its rulers, from the  best elements of  every class  and denies the right of
any class or  corporation to usurp the government  to itself - whether it be
the nobles, the  clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. For government
by any one class is fatal to the  welfare of  the whole. Two  years ago  our
ideal  seemed to  have been realized.  The monopoly of power had been  taken
from the  class that had  held it too long and  too unjustly  by  the hollow
right of heredity. It  had been distributed as evenly as might be throughout
the State, and if  men had  only paused there, all would have been well. But
our impetus carried us too far, the  privileged orders goaded us on by their
very opposition, and the result is the horror of which yesterday  you saw no
more than the beginnings. No, no," he ended. "Careers there may be for venal
place-seekers,  for opportunists;  but none for a man who desires to respect
himself. It is time to go. I make no sacrifice in going."
     "But where will you go? What will you do?"
     "Oh,  something.  Consider  that  in  four  years I have  been  lawyer,
politician,  swordsman, and buffoon - especially the latter. There is always
a  place in  the  world  for Scaramouche. Besides,  do  you know that unlike
Scaramouche I have been oddly provident? I am the  owner of a little farm in
Saxony.  I  think that  agriculture  might  suit  me.  It  is  a  meditative
occupation; and when all is  said, I  am not a man of action. I haven't  the
qualities for the part."
     She looked up  into his face, and there was a wistful smile in her deep
blue eyes.
     "Is there any part for which you have not the qualities, I wonder?"
     "Do you really? Yet you cannot say that I have made a success of any of
those which I have played. I have always ended by running away. I am running
away now  from  a thriving fencing-academy, which is  likely  to become  the
pro