mercilessly.

"That's the story. He rallied a little one night and said he
wanted to tell me something. I, being a gentleman, he said, he
could confide in me. I told him that he was mistaken. That there
was a good deal of a plebeian in me, that he couldn't know. He
seemed disappointed. He muttered something about his innocence and
something that sounded like a curse on some woman, then turned to
the wall and--just grew cold."

"On a woman," cried Miss Moorsom indignantly. "What woman?"

"I wonder!" said Renouard, raising his eyes and noting the crimson
of her ear-lobes against the live whiteness of her complexion, the
sombre, as if secret, night-splendour of her eyes under the
writhing flames of her hair. "Some woman who wouldn't believe in
that poor innocence of his. . . Yes. You probably. And now you
will not believe in me--not even in me who must in truth be what I
am--even to death. No! You won't. And yet, Felicia, a woman like
you and a man like me do not often come together on this earth."

The flame of her glorious head scorched his face. He flung his hat
far away, and his suddenly lowered eyelids brought out startlingly
his resemblance to antique bronze, the profile of Pallas, still,
austere, bowed a little in the shadow of the rock. "Oh! If you
could only understand the truth that is in me!" he added.

She waited, as if too astounded to speak, till he looked up again,
and then with unnatural force as if defending herself from some
unspoken aspersion, "It's I who stand for truth here! Believe in