X.

'Don't stop; ride on,' he called out to her, next morning, 'I shan't

be amusing to-day. I'm frightfully low in my mind.'

'Perhaps it will amuse me to study you in a new aspect,' she said.

'You can entertain me with the story of your griefs.'

'Bare my wounds to make a lady smile. Oh, anything to oblige you.'

She leapt lightly from Bézigue, and sank upon the moss.

'What is it all about?'

'Oh, not what you imagine,' said he. 'It's about my debts.'

'I had hoped it was about your sins.'

'_My_ sins! I'm kept awake at night by the thought of _yours_.'

'Your conscience is too sensitive. Mine are but peccadillos.'

'You say that because you've no sense of moral proportion. Are

cruelty and dissimulation pecadillos?'

'They may be even virtues. It all depends. Discipline and reserve!'

'I'll forgive you everything if you'll tell me your name.'

'Oh, I have debts, as well as you.'

'What have debts to do with the question?'

'I owe something to my reputation.'

'If we're going to consider our reputations, what of mine?'

'Yours has preceded you into the country,' she said, and drew from her

pocket a small, thin volume, bound in grey cloth, with a gilt design.

'Oh, heavens!' cried Paul. 'This is how one's past finds one out.'

'Oh, some of them aren't bad,' she said. 'Wait, I'll read you one.'

'Then you know English?'

'A leetle. Bot the one I shall read is in Franch.'

And then she read out, in an enchanting voice, one of his own French

sonnets. 'That isn't bad,' she added. 'Do you think it hopelessly

bad?'

'It shows promise, perhaps--when _you_ read it.'

'It is strange, though, that it should have been written by a man who

had never been in love.'

'Imagination! Upon my word, I never had been. Besides, the idea is

stolen. It's almost a literal translation from Rossetti. What with a

little imagination and a little ingenuity, one can do wonderfully well

on other people's experience.'

'I don't believe you. You have been in love a hundred times.'

'Never.'

'Never? Not even with Hélène de la Granjolaye de Ravanches?'

'Oh, I don't count my infancy. Never with anybody else.'

'It's very strange,' she said. 'Tell me some more about her.'

'Oh, bother her.'

'I suppose when they carried you off to Paris you had a tearful

parting? Did you kick and scream and say you wouldn't go?'

'Why do you always make me talk about the Queen?'

'She interests me. And when you talk about the Queen, I rather like

you. It is nice to see that there _was_ a time when you were capable

of an emotion.'

'You fancy I'm incapable now?'

'Tell me about your leave-taking, your farewells.'

'Bother our farewells.'

'They must have been heart-rending?'

'Probably.'

'Don't you remember?'

'Oh, yes, I remember.'

'Go on. Don't make me drag it from you by inches. Tell it to me in a

pretty melodious narrative. Either that, or--' she touched her

whistle.

'That's barefaced intimidation.'

She raised the whistle to her lips.

'Stay, stay!' he cried, 'I yield.'

'I wait,' she answered.

He bent his brows for an instant, then looked up smiling. 'If it puts

you to sleep, you'll know whom to blame.'

'Yes, yes, go on,' she said impatiently.

'Dear me, there's nothing worth telling. It was a few weeks after my

grandmother's death. We were going to Paris the next day. Her father

drove over, with her, to say good-bye. Whilst he was with my people in

the drawing-room, she and I walked in the garden.--I say, this is

going to become frightfully sentimental, you know. Sure you want it?'

'Go on. Go on.'

'Well, we walked in the garden; and she was crying, and I was

beseeching her not to cry. She wore one of her white frocks, with a

red sash, and her hair fell down her back below her waist. I was

holding her hand. "Don't cry, don't cry. I'll come back as soon as I'm

a man, and marry you in real earnest!" I promised her.' He paused and

laughed.

'Go on. And she?'

'"Oh, aren't we married in real earnest now?" she asked. I explained

that we weren't. "You have to have the Notary over from Bayonne, and

go to Church. I know, because that's how it was when my cousin Elodie

was married. We're only married in play?" Then she asked if that

wasn't just as good. "Things one does in play are always so much nicer

than real things," she said.'

'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! She had a prophetic soul.'

'Hadn't she? I admitted that that was true. But I added that perhaps

when people were grown up and could do exactly as they pleased, it was

different,--perhaps real things would come to be pleasant too.'

'Have you found them so?'

'I suppose I can't be quite grown-up, for I've never yet had a chance

to do exactly as I pleased.'

'Poor young man. Go on.'

'And, besides, I reminded her, all the married people we knew were

really married, my father and mother, André's father and mother, my

cousin Elodie. Hélène's mother was dead, so her parents didn't count.

And I argued that we might be sure they found it fun to be really

married, or else they wouldn't keep it up. "Oh, well, then, I suppose

we'll have to be really married too," she consented. "But it seems as

though it never could be as nice as this. If only you weren't going

away!" Whereupon I promised again to come back, if she'd promise to

wait for me, and never love anybody else, and never, never, never

allow another boy to kiss her. "Oh, never, never, never," she assured

me. Then her father called her, and they drove away.'

'And you went to Paris and forgot her. Why were you false to your

engagement?'

'Oh, she had allowed another boy to kiss her. She had married a German

prince. Besides, I received a good deal of discouragement from my

family. The next day, in the train, I confided our understanding to my

mother. My mother seemed to doubt whether her father would like me as

a son-in-law. I was certain he would; he was awfully good-natured; he

had given me two louis as a parting tip. "But do you think he'll care

to let his daughter marry a bourgeois?" my mother asked. "A what?"

cried I. "A bourgeois," said my mother. "I ain't a bourgeois," I

retorted indignantly. "What are you then?" pursued my mother. I

explained that my grandmother had been a countess, and my uncle was a

count; so how could I be a bourgeois? "But what is your father?" my

mother asked. Oh, my father was "only an Englishman." But that didn't

make me a bourgeois? "Yes, it does," my mother said. "Just because my

father's English?" "Because he's a commoner, because he isn't noble."

"But then--then what did you go and marry him for?" I stammered.

"Where would you have been if I hadn't?" my mother enquired. That

puzzled me for a moment, but then I answered, "Well, if you'd married

a Frenchman, a Count or a Duke or something, I shouldn't have been a

bourgeois;" and my mother confessed that that was true enough. "I

don't care if I _am_ a bourgeois," I said at last. "When I'm big I'm

going back to Saint-Graal; and if her father won't let me really marry

her, because I'm a bourgeois, then we'll just go on making believe

we're married."'

She laughed. 'And now you are big, and you've come back to

Saint-Graal, and your lady-love is at Granjolaye. Why don't you call

on her and offer to redeem your promise?'

'Why doesn't she send for me--bid me to an audience?'

'Perhaps her prophetic soul warns her how you'd disappoint her.'

'Do you think she'd be disappointed in me?'

'Aren't you disappointed in yourself?'

'Oh, dear, no; I think I'm very nice.'

'_I_ should be disappointed in myself, if I were a man who had been

capable of such an innocent, sweet affection as yours for Hélène de la

Granjolaye, and had then gone and soiled myself with the mud of what

they call life.' She spoke earnestly; her face was grave and sad.

He was surprised, and a little alarmed. 'Do you mean by that that you

think I'm a bad lot?' he asked.

'You said the other day--yesterday was it?--that you had made a fool

of yourself on various occasions.'

'Well?'

'Did the process not generally involve making a fool of a woman too?'

'Reciprocity? Perhaps.'

'And what was it you always said to them?'

'Oh, I suppose I did.'

'You told them you loved them?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'And was it true?'

'No.'

'Well, then!'

'Ah, but they weren't deceived; they never believed it. That's only a

convention of the game, a necessary formula, like the "Dear" at the

beginning of a letter.'

'You have "lived"; you have "lived." You'd have been so unique, so

rare, so much more interesting, if instead of going and "living" like

other men, you had remained true to the ideal passion of your

childhood.'

'I had the misfortune to be born into the world, and not into a fairy

tale, you see. But it's a perfectly gratuitous assumption, that I have

"lived."'

'Can you honestly tell me you haven't?' she asked, very soberly, with

something like eagerness; her pale face intent.

'As a matter of fact ... Oh, the worst of it is ... I can't honestly

say that I've never ... But then, what do you want to rake up such

matters for? It's not my fault if I've accepted the traditions of my

century. Well, anyhow, you see I can't lie to you.'

'You appear to find it difficult,' she assented, rising.

'Well, what do you infer from that?'

She blew her whistle. 'That--that you're out of training,' she said

lightly, as she mounted her horse.

'Oh,' he groaned, 'you're--'

'What?'

'You beggar language.'

She laughed and rode away.

'There, I've spoiled everything,' Paul said, and went home, and passed

a sleepless night.