Notwithstanding | Page 2

him, the eccentric, rich young Englishman who rode his own horses under a French name which no one believed was his own. He often came to her father's cabaret in the Rue du Bac.
"Good morning, mademoiselle."
"Good morning, M. Le Geyt."
He came and leaned on the parapet beside her.
"Are you not riding to-day?"
"Riding to-day! Ride on the Flat! Is it likely? Besides, I had a fall yesterday schooling. My neck is stiff."
He did not add that he had all but broken it. Indeed, it was probable that he had already forgotten the fact.
He looked hard at her with his dancing, irresponsible blue eyes. He had the good looks which he shared with some of his horses, of extreme high breeding. He was even handsome in a way, with a thin, reckless, trivial face, and a slender, wiry figure. He looked as light as a leaf, and as if he were being blown through life by any chance wind, the wind of his own vagaries.
His manner had just the shade of admiring familiarity which to some men seems admissible to the pretty daughter of a disreputable old innkeeper.
He peered down at the river, and then at the houses crowding along its yellow quays, mysterious behind their paint as a Frenchwoman behind her pomade and powder.
Then he looked back at her with mock solemnity.
"I see nothing," he said.
"What did you expect to see?"
"Something that had the honour of engaging your attention completely."
"I was looking at the water."
"Just so. But why?"
She paused a moment, and then said, without any change of voice--
"I was thinking of throwing myself in."
Their eyes met--his, foolhardy, inquisitive, not unkindly; hers, sombre, sinister, darkened.
The recklessness in both of them rushed out and joined hands.
He laughed lightly.
"No, no," he said, "sweet Annette--lovely Annette. The Seine is not for you. So you have quarrelled with Falconhurst already. He has managed very badly. Or did you find out that he was going to be married? I knew it, but I did not say. Never mind. If he is, it doesn't matter. And if he isn't, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters."
"You are right. Nothing matters," said Annette. Her face, always pale, had become livid.
His became suddenly alert, flushed, as hers paled. He sighted a possible adventure. Excitement blazed up in his light eyes.
"One tear," he said, "yes,--you may shed one tear. But the Seine! No. The Seine is made up of all the tears which women have shed for men--men of no account, worthless wretches like Falconhurst and me. You must not add to that great flood. Leave off looking at the water, Annette. It is not safe for you to look at it. Look at me instead. And listen to what I am saying. You are not listening."
"Yes, I am."
"I'm going down to Fontainebleau for a bit. The doctor says I must get out of Paris and keep quiet, or I shan't be able to ride at Auteuil. I don't believe a word he says, croaking old woman! But--hang it all, I'm bound to ride Sam Slick at Auteuil. Kirby can look after the string while I'm at Fontainebleau. I'm going there this afternoon. Come with me. I am not much, but I am better than the Seine. My kisses will not choke the life out of you, as the Seine's will. We will spend a week together, and talk matters over, and sit in the sun, and at the end of it we shall both laugh--how we shall laugh--when you remember this." And he pointed to the swirling water.
A thought slid through Annette's mind like a snake through grass.
"He will hear of it. He is sure to hear of it. That will hurt him worse than if I were drowned."
"I don't care what I do," she said, meeting his eyes without flinching. It was he who for a moment winced when he saw the smouldering flame in hers.
He laughed again, the old light, inconsequent laugh which came to him so easily, with which he met good and bad fortune alike.
"When you are as old as I am," he said not unkindly, "you will do as I am doing now, take the good the gods provide you, and trouble your mind about nothing else. For there's nothing in the world or out of it that is worth troubling about. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing."
"Nothing," echoed Annette hoarsely.

Chapter 2
"Et partout le spectre de l'amour, Et nullepart l'amour."
The train was crawling down to Fontainebleau. Annette sat opposite her companion, looking not at him but at the strange country through which they were gong. How well she knew it! How often she had gone down to Fontainebleau. But to-day all the familiar lines were altered. The townlets, up to their eyes in trees, seemed alien, dead. Presently the forest, no longer fretted by the suburbs, came close up