 was to
come back to him later as beautiful in its grace. »The dear thing did please
you?« Then as he met it with the largest »Oh!« of enthusiasm: »She's perfect.
She's my joy.«
    »Well, I'm sure that - if one were near her and saw more of her - she'd be
mine.«
    »Then,« said Madame de Vionnet, »tell Mrs. Newsome that!«
    He wondered the more. »What good will that do you?« As she appeared unable
at once to say, however, he brought out something else. »Is your daughter in
love with our friend?«
    »Ah,« she rather startlingly answered, »I wish you'd find out!«
    He showed his surprise. »I? A stranger?«
    »Oh you won't be a stranger - presently. You shall see her quite, I assure
you, as if you weren't.«
    It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion. »It seems to me
surely that if her mother can't -«
    »Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!« she rather inconsequently broke
in. But she checked herself with something she seemed to give out as after all
more to the point. »Tell her I've been good for him. Don't you think I have?«
    It had its effect on him - more than at the moment he quite measured. Yet he
was consciously enough touched. »Oh if it's all you -!«
    »Well, it may not be all, « she interrupted, »but it's to a great extent.
Really and truly,« she added in a tone that was to take its place with him among
things remembered.
    »Then it's very wonderful.« He smiled at her from a face that he felt as
strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so. At last she also got up.
»Well, don't you think that for that -«
    »I ought to save you?« So it was that the way to meet her - and the way, as
well, in a manner, to get off - came over him. He heard himself use the
exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine his flight. »I'll
save you if I can.«

                                       II

 
In Chad's lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt himself
present at
