She came a step nearer, which brought her very close to him.
"Monsieur," she faltered very shyly, "in the old days at Bellecour you would have served me out of other sentiments." He started now in spite of himself, and eyed her with a sudden gleam of hope, or triumph, or mistrust, or perhaps of all three.

Then his glance fell, and his voice was wistful.
"But the old days are dead, Mademoiselle." "The days, yes," she answered, taking courage from his tone.

"But love Monsieur, is everlasting--it never dies, they say." And now it was La Boulaye who drew closer, and this man who had so rigidly schooled himself out of all emotions, felt his breath quickening, and his pulses throbbing faster and faster.

To him it seemed that she was right, and that love never died--for the love for her, which he believed he had throttled out of existence long ago, seemed of a sudden to take life as vigorously as ever.

And then it was as if some breeze out of the past bore to his nostrils the smell of the violets and of the moist earth of that April morning when she had repulsed him in the woods of Bellecour.