glance of our hours of dispute. You will later regret having been unkind
to-day."

As he pronounced those enigmatical words, she saw that he had in his eyes
and in his smile something different and indefinable. It must have been
that she loved him still more than she herself believed as for a second
she forgot both her pain and her resolution, and she asked him, quickly:

"You have some trouble? You are suffering? What is it?"

"Nothing," replied Dorsenne. "But time is flying, the minutes are going
by, and not only the minutes. There is an old and charming. French ode,
which you do not know and which begins:

'Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame.
Las, le temps? Non. Mais nous nous en allons.'"

"Which means, little Countess, in simple prose, that this is no doubt the
last conversation we shall have together this season, and that it would
be cruel to mar for me this last visit."

"Do I understand you aright?" said Alba. She, too, knew too well
Julien's way of speaking not to know that that mannerism, half-mocking,
half-sentimental, always served him to prepare phrases more grave, and
against the emotion of which her fear of appearing a dupe rose in
advance. She crossed her arms upon her breast, and after a pause she
continued, in a grave voice: "You are going away?"

"Yes," he replied, and from his coat-pocket he partly drew his ticket.
"You see I have acted like the poltroons who cast themselves into the