devotion of which she mightn't make light. "Ah philosophy?" she echoed.
"I HAVE none. Thank heaven," she cried with vehemence, "I have none! I
believe, Mr. Longmore," she added in a moment, "that I've nothing on
earth but a conscience--it's a good time to tell you so--nothing but a
dogged obstinate clinging conscience. Does that prove me to be indeed of
your faith and race, and have you one yourself for which you can say as
much? I don't speak in vanity, for I believe that if my conscience may
prevent me from doing anything very base it will effectually prevent me
also from doing anything very fine."

"I'm delighted to hear it," her friend returned with high emphasis--
"that proves we're made for each other. It's very certain I too shall
never cut a great romantic figure. And yet I've fancied that in my case
the unaccommodating organ we speak of might be blinded and gagged a
while, in a really good cause, if not turned out of doors. In yours," he
went on with the same appealing irony, "is it absolutely beyond being
'squared'?"

But she made no concession to his tone. "Don't laugh at your
conscience," she answered gravely; "that's the only blasphemy I know."

She had hardly spoken when she turned suddenly at an unexpected sound,
and at the same moment he heard a footstep in an adjacent by-path which
crossed their own at a short distance from where they stood.

"It's M. de Mauves," she said at once; with which she moved slowly
forward. Longmore, wondering how she knew without seeing, had overtaken
her by the time her husband came into view. A solitary walk in the
forest was a pastime to which M. de Mauves was not addicted, but he
seemed on this occasion to have resorted to it with some equanimity. He