"I--it was nothing." Her lashes fell, and dull color flushed through her countenance.

"Between friends," the Duke suggested, "there should be no reservations."

"But it is such a pitiably inartistic little history!" the d.u.c.h.ess protested. "Eh bien, if you must have it! For I was a girl once,--an innocent girl, as given as are most girls to long reveries and bright, callow day-dreams. And there was a man--"

"There always is," said the Duke, darkly.

"Why, he never even knew, mon ami!" cried his wife, and laughed, and clapped her hands. "He was much older than I; there were stories about him--oh, a great many stories,--and one hears even in a convent--" She paused with a reminiscent smile. "And I used to wonder shyly what this very fearful reprobate might be like. I thought of him with de Lauzun, and Dom Juan, and with the Duc de Grammont, and all those other scented, shimmering, magnificent libertines over whom les ingenues--wonder; only, I thought of him, more often than of the others, I made little prayers for him to the Virgin. And I procured a tiny miniature of him. And, when I came out of the convent, I met him at my father's house. [Footnote: She was of the Aigullon family, and sister to d'Agenois, the first and very politic lover of Madame de la Tournelle, afterward mistress to Louis Quinze under the t.i.tle of d.u.c.h.esse de Chateauroux. The later relations between the d'Aigullons and Madame du Barry are well-known.] And that was all."

"All?" The Duc de Puysange had raised his swart eyebrows, and he slightly smiled.

"All," she re-echoed, firmly. "Oh, I a.s.sure you he was still too youthful to have any time to devote to young girls. He was courteous--no more. But I kept the picture,--ah, girls are so foolish, Gaston!" The d.u.c.h.ess, with a light laugh, drew upward the thin chain about her neck. At its end was a little heart-shaped locket of dull gold, with a diamond sunk deep in each side. She regarded the locket with a quaint sadness. "It is a long while since I have seen that miniature, for it has been sealed in here," said she, "ever since--since some one gave me the locket"

Now the Duc de Puysange took this trinket, still tepid and perfumed from contact with her flesh. He turned it awkwardly in his hand, his eyes flashing volumes of wonderment and inquiry. Yet he did not appear jealous, nor excessively unhappy. "And never," he demanded, some vital emotion catching at his voice--"never since then--?"

"I never, of course, approved of him," she answered; and at this point de Puysange noted--so near as he could remember for the first time in his existence,--the curve of her trailing lashes. Why but his wife had lovely eyelashes, lashes so unusual that he drew nearer to observe them more at his ease. "Still,--I hardly know how to tell you--still, without him the world was more quiet, less colorful; it held, appreciably, less to catch the eye and ear. Eh, he had an air, Gaston; he was never an admirable man, but, somehow, he was invariably the centre of the picture."

"And you have always--always you have cared for him?" said the Duke, drawing nearer and yet more near to her.

"Other men," she murmured, "seem futile and of minor importance, after him." The lashes lifted. They fell, promptly. "So, I have always kept the heart, mon ami. And, yes, I have always loved him, I suppose."

The chain had moved and quivered in his hand. Was it man or woman who trembled? wondered the Duc de Puysange. For a moment he stood immovable, every nerve in his body tense. Surely, it was she who trembled? It seemed to him that this woman, whose cold perfection had galled him so long, now stood with downcast eyes, and blushed and trembled, too, like any rustic maiden come shamefaced to her first tryst.

"Helene--!" he cried.

"But no, my story is too dull," she protested, and shrugged her shoulders, and disengaged herself--half-fearfully, it seemed to her husband. "Even more insipid than your comedy," she added, with a not unkindly smile. "Do we drive this afternoon?"

"In effect, yes!" cried the Duke. He paused and laughed--a low and gentle laugh, pulsing with unutterable content. "Since this afternoon, madame--"

"Is cloudless?" she queried.

"Nay, far more than that," de Puysange amended; "it is refulgent."

V

What time the d.u.c.h.ess prepared her person for the drive the Duke walked in the garden of the Hotel de Puysange. Up and down a shady avenue of lime-trees he paced, and chuckled to himself, and smiled benignantly upon the moss-incrusted statues,--a proceeding that was, beyond any reasonable doubt, prompted by his happiness rather than by the artistic merits of the postured images, since they const.i.tuted a formidable and broken-nosed collection of the most c.u.mbrous, the most incredible, and the most hideous instances of sculpture the family of Puysange had been able to acc.u.mulate for, as the phrase is, love or money. Amid these mute, gray travesties of antiquity and the tastes of his ancestors, the Duc de Puysange exulted.

"Ma foi, will life never learn to improve upon the extravagancies of romance? Why, it is the old story,--the hackneyed story of the husband and wife who fall in love with each other! Life is a very gross plagiarist. And she--did she think I had forgotten how I gave her that little locket so long ago? Eh, ma femme, so 'some one'--'some one' who cannot be alluded to without a pause and an adorable flush--presented you with your locket! Nay, love is not always blind!"

The Duke paused before a puff-jawed Triton, who wallowed in an arid basin and uplifted toward heaven what an indulgent observer might construe as a broken conch-sh.e.l.l. "Love! Mon Dieu, how are the superior fallen! I have not the decency to conceal even from myself that I love my wife! I am shameless, I had as lief proclaim it from the house-tops. And a month ago--tarare, the ignorant beast I was! Moreover, at that time I had not pa.s.sed a month in her company,--eh bien, I defy Diogenes and Timon to come through such a testing with unscratched hearts. I love her. And she loves me!"

He drew a deep breath, and he lifted his comely hands toward the pale spring sky, where the west wind was shepherding a sluggish flock of clouds.

"O sun, moon, and stars!" de Puysange said, aloud: "I call you to witness that she loves me! Always she has loved me! O kindly little universe! O little kings, tricked out with garish crowns and sceptres, you are masters of your petty kingdoms, but I am master of her heart!

"I do not deserve it," he conceded, to a dilapidated faun, who, though his flute and the hands that held it had been missing for over a quarter of a century, piped, on with unimpaired and fatuous mirth. "Ah, heart of gold--demented trinket that you are, I have not merited that you should retain my likeness all these years! If I had my deserts--parbleu! let us accept such benefits as the G.o.ds provide, and not question the wisdom of their dispensations. What man of forty-three may dare to ask for his deserts? No, we prefer instead the dealings of blind chance and all the gross injustices by which so many of us escape hanging"....

VI

"So madame has visitors? Eh bien, let us, then, behold these naughty visitors, who would sever a husband from his wife!"

From within the Red Salon came a murmur of speech,--quiet, cordial, colorless,--which showed very plainly that madame had visitors. As the Duc de Puysange reached out his hand to draw aside the portieres, her voice was speaking, courteously, but without vital interest.

"--and afterward," said she, "weather permitting--"

"Ah, Helene!" cried a voice that the Duke knew almost as well, "how long am I to be held at arm's-length by these petty conventionalities? Is candor never to be permitted?"

The half-drawn portiere trembled in the Duke's grasp. He could see, from where he stood, the inmates of the salon, though their backs were turned.

They were his wife and the Marquis de Soyecourt. The Marquis bent eagerly toward the d.u.c.h.esse de Puysange, who had risen as he spoke.

For a moment she stayed as motionless as her perplexed husband; then, with a wearied sigh, the d.u.c.h.ess sank back into a _fauteuil_. "You are at liberty to speak," she said, slowly, and with averted glance--"what you choose."

The portiere fell; but between its folds the Duke still peered into the room, where de Soyecourt had drawn nearer to the Duke's wife. "There is so little to say," the Marquis murmured, "beyond what my eyes have surely revealed a great while ago--that I love you."

"Ah!" the d.u.c.h.ess cried, with a swift intaking of the breath which was almost a sob. "Monsieur, I think you forget that you are speaking to the wife of your kinsman and your friend."

The Marquis threw out his hands in a gesture which was theatrical, though the trouble that wrung his countenance seemed very real. He was, as one has said, a slight, fair man, with the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of an aging seraph. A dull pang shot through the Duke as he thought of the two years' difference in their ages, and of his own tendency to embonpoint, and of the dismal features which calumniated him. Yonder porcelain fellow was in appearance so incredibly young!

"Do you consider," said the Marquis, "that I do not know I act an abominable part? Honor, friendship and even decency!--ah, I regret their sacrifice, but love is greater than these petty things!"

The d.u.c.h.ess sighed. "For my part," she returned, "I think differently.

Love is, doubtless, very wonderful and beautiful, but I am sufficiently old-fashioned to hold honor yet dearer. Even--even if I loved you, monsieur, there are certain promises, sworn before the altar, that I could not forget." She looked up, candidly, into the flushed, handsome face of the Marquis.

"Words!" he cried, with vexed impatiency.

"An oath," she answered, sadly,--"an oath that I may not break."

There was hunger in the Marquis' eyes, and his hands lifted. Their glances met for a breathless moment, and his eyes were tender, and her eyes were resolute, but very, very compa.s.sionate.

"I love you!" he said. He said no more than this, but none could doubt he spoke the truth.

"Monsieur," the d.u.c.h.ess replied, and the depths of her contralto voice were shaken like the sobbing of a violin, and her hands stole upward to her bosom, and clasped the gold heart, as she spoke,--"monsieur, ever since I first knew you, many years ago, at my father's home, I have held you as my friend. You were more kind to the girl, Monsieur de Soyecourt, than you have been to the woman. Yet only since our stay in Poictesme yonder have I feared for the result of our friendship. I have tried to prevent this result. I have failed." The d.u.c.h.ess lifted the gold heart to her lips, and her golden head bent over it. "Monsieur, before G.o.d, if I had loved you with my whole being,--if I had loved you all these years,--if the sight of your face were to me to-day the one good thing life holds, and the mere sound of your voice had power to set my heart to beating--beating"--she paused for a little, and then rose, with a sharp breath that shook her slender body visibly,--"even then, my Louis, the answer would be the same; and that is,--go!"

"Helene--!" he murmured; and his outstretched hands, which trembled, groped toward her.

"Let us have no misunderstanding," she protested, more composedly; "you have my answer."

De Soyecourt did not, at mildest, lead an immaculate life. But by the pa.s.sion that now possessed him the tiny man seemed purified and transfigured beyond masculinity. His face was ascetic in its reverence as he waited there, with his head slightly bowed. "I go," he said, at last, as if picking his way carefully among tumbling words; then bent over her hand, which, she made no effort to withdraw. "Ah, my dear!" cried the Marquis, staring into her shy, uplifted eyes, "I think I might have made you happy!"

His arm brushed the elbow of the Duke as de Soyecourt left the salon. The Marquis seemed aware of nothing: the misery of both the men, as de Puysange reflected, was of a sort to be disturbed by nothing less noticeable than an earthquake.

VII

"If I had loved you all these years," murmured the Duc de Puysange. His dull gaze wandered toward the admirable "Herodias" of Giorgione which hung there in the corridor: the strained face of the woman, the accented muscles of her arms, the purple, bellying cloak which spread behind her, the livid countenance of the dead man staring up from the salver,--all these he noted, idly. It seemed strange that he should be appraising a painting at this particular moment.

"Well, now I will make recompense," said the Duke.