“She is,” he repeated. “But she is nothing to me. I admire her beauty and her goodness, that is all. She refused me. Good! At first I rebelled against my fate, then I accepted it.” And he repeated: “Then I accepted it.”

I might have made some reply to his flattering confidences, but I heard some one walk quickly across the foot-path outside and through the wide entrance porch. In another moment the door of the salon was thrown open, and a figure stood radiant and smiling in the doorway. The antechamber had already been lighted, and the figure was silhouetted against the yellow radiance.

“So you are here, and I have found you, all in the dark!”

Alresca turned his head.

“Rosa!”