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And yet he would not He would not, out of pride Instead he bit on his

harsh beard, and lay looking upward to the rafters, waiting ould

come He who had held her at his will now lay at hers, and waited He

who had spared her life at a price now took his own a gift at her hands,

and bore it

"Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes--"

His mind went back by some chance to those words--the words he had

neither e and the

blow; to the scene in the meadow beside the river; to the last ride

between La Fleche and Angers--the ride during which he had played with

her fears and hugged hiure? Alas! of all his plans for dazzling her had coers had defeated hinonville after the fashion of Bayard and the Paladins, and in the

teeth of snarling thousands, he had co him after

another fashion and at his own expense Instead of dazzling her by his

her his

life, and so weak, so broken, that the tears of childhood welled up in

his eyes

Out of the darkness a hand, cool and firhtly, drew it to warm lips, carried it to a woman's bosom