He was about to utter a protest,--she stopped him by a gesture.

"Hush!" she said.

And there was a moment's silence.




CHAPTER VI

"When I think about love," she began presently, in a soft dreamy
voice--"I'm quite sure that very few people ever really feel it or
understand it. It must be the rarest thing in all the world! This
poor Sieur Amadis, asleep so long in his grave, was a true lover,
--and I will tell you how I know he had said good-bye to love when
he married. All those books we found in the old dower-chest, that
day when we were playing about together as children, belonged to
him--some are his own compositions, written by his own hand,--the
others, as you know, are printed books which must have been
difficult to get in his day, and are now, I suppose, quite out of
date and almost unknown. I have read them all!--my head is a
little library full of odd volumes! But there is one--a manuscript
book--which I never tire of reading,--it is a sort of journal in
which the Sieur Amadis wrote down many of his own feelings--
sometimes in prose, sometimes in verse--and by following them
carefully and piecing them together, it is quite easy to find out
his sadness and secret--how he loved once and never loved again--"