"But there are relics--and so on!" she said suggestively, and she picked
up the miniature of the Emperor.

"Owning a skeleton doesn't make it your ancestor," he replied.

He laughed, for he was pleased at his own cleverness, and he also wished
to remain good-tempered.

"I am so glad to see you at last take the true attitude towards this,"
she responded brightly. "If it's a comedy, enjoy it. If it's a
tragedy"--she drew herself up with a little shudder, for she was thinking
of that figure dropping from Elise's window--"you cannot stop it.
Tragedy is inevitable; but comedy is within the gift and governance of
mortals."

For a moment again she was lost in the thought of Elise, of Valmond's
vulgarity and commonness; and he had dared to speak words of love almost
to her! She flushed to the hair, as she had done fifty times since she
had seen him that moonlit night. Ah, she had thought him the dreamer,
the enthusiast--maybe, in kind, credulous moments, the great man he
claimed to be; and he had only been the sensualist after all! That he
did not love Elise, she knew well enough: he had been coldblooded; in
this, at least, he was Napoleonic.

She had not spoken with him since that night; but she had had two long
letters superscribed: "In Camp, Headquarters, Dalgrothe Mountain," and
these had breathed only patriotism, the love of a cause, the warmth of
a strong, virile temperament, almost a poetical abandon of unnamed
ambitions and achievements. She had read the letters again and again,
for she had found it hard to reconcile them with her later knowledge of