I would thank you, Mademoiselle, for the happiness that has been mine during the past few days--a happiness such as for years has not fallen to my lot.

To another and worthier man, the task of thanking you might be an easy one; but to me, who know myself to be so far beneath you, the obligation is so overwhelming that I know of no words to fitly express it." "Monsieur, Monsieur, I beseech you! Already you have said overmuch." "Nay, Mademoiselle; not half enough." "Have you forgotten, then, what you did for me?
Our trivial service to you is but unseemly recompense.

What other man would have come to my rescue as you came, with such odds against you--and forgetting the affronting words wherewith that very day I had met your warning?
Tell me, Monsieur, who would have done that ?" "Why, any man who deemed himself a gentleman, and who possessed such knowledge as I had." She laughed a laugh of unbelief.
"You are mistaken, sir," she answered.

"The deed was worthy of one of those preux chevaliers we read of, and I have never known but one man capable of accomplishing it." Those words and the tone wherein they were uttered set my brain on fire.
I turned towards her; our glances met, and her eyes--those eyes that but a while ago had never looked on me without avowing the disdain wherein she had held me--were now filled with a light of kindliness, of sympathy, of tenderness that seemed more than I could endure.
Already my hand was thrust into the bosom of my doublet, and my fingers were about to drag forth that little shred of green velvet that I had found in the coppice on the day of her abduction, and that I had kept ever since as one keeps the relic of a departed saint.

Another moment and I should have poured out the story of the mad, hopeless passion that filled my heart to bursting, when of a sudden--"Yvonne, Yvonne!" came Genevieve's fresh voice from the other end of the terrace.