The General bowed his head to regainself-control; when he looked
up again he saw her face beyond the grating--the thin, white, but

still impassioned face of the nun. All the magic charm of youth
that once bloomed there, all the fair contrast of velvet

whiteness and the colour of the Bengal rose, had given place to a
burning glow, as of a porcelain jar with a faint light shining

through it. The wonderful hair in which she took such pride had
been shaven; there was a bandage round her forehead and about her

face. An ascetic life had left dark traces about the eyes, which
still sometimes shot out fevered glances; their ordinary calm

expression was but a veil. In a few words, she was but the ghost
of her former self.

"Ah! you that have come to be my life, you must come out of this
tomb! You were mine; you had no right to give yourself, even to

God. Did you not promise me to give up all at the least command
from me? You may perhaps think me worthy of that promise now

when you hear what I have done for you. I have sought you all
through the world. You have been in my thoughts at every moment

for five years; my life has been given to you. My friends, very
powerful friends, as you know, have helped with all their might

to search every convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily, and
America. Love burned more brightly for every vain search. Again

and again I made long journeys with a false hope; I have wasted
my life and the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under

many a dark convent wall. I am not speaking of a faithfulness
that knows no bounds, for what is it?--nothing compared with the

infinite longings of my love. If your remorse long ago was
sincere, you ought not to hesitate to follow me today."

"You forget that I am not free."
"The Duke is dead," he answered quickly.

Sister Theresa flushed red.
"May heaven be open to him!" she cried with a quick rush of

feeling. "He was generous to me.--But I did not mean such ties;
it was one of my sins that I was ready to break them all without

scruple--for you."
"Are you speaking of your vows?" the General asked, frowning.

"I did not think that anything weighed heavier with your heart
than love. But do not think twice of it, Antoinette; the Holy

Father himself shall absolve you of your oath. I will surely go
to Rome, I will entreat all the powers of earth; if God could

come down from heaven, I would----"
"Do not blaspheme."

"So do not fear the anger of God. Ah! I would far rather hear
that you would leave your prison for me; that this very night you

would let yourself down into a boat at the foot of the cliffs.
And we would go away to be happy somewhere at the world's end, I

know not where. And with me at your side, you should come back
to life and health under the wings of love."

"You must not talk like this," said Sister Theresa; "you do
not know what you are to me now. I love you far better than I

ever loved you before. Every day I pray for you; I see you with
other eyes. Armand, if you but knew the happiness of giving

yourself up, without shame, to a pure friendship which God
watches over! You do not know what joy it is to me to pray for

heaven's blessing on you. I never pray for myself: God will do
with me according to His will; but, at the price of my soul, I

wish I could be sure that you are happy here on earth, and that
you will be happy hereafter throughout all ages. My eternal life

is all that trouble has left me to offer up to you. I am old now
with weeping; I am neither young nor fair; and in any case, you

could not respect the nun who became a wife; no love, not even
motherhood, could give me absolution. . . . What can you say to

outweigh the uncounted thoughts that have gathered in my heart
during the past five years, thoughts that have changed, and worn,

and blighted it? I ought to have given a heart less sorrowful to
God."

"What can I say? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love
you; that affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in

another heart that is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a
thing and so hard to find, that I doubted you, and put you to

sharp proof; but now, today, I love you, Antoinette, with all my
soul's strength. . . . If you will follow me into solitude, I

will hear no voice but yours, I will see no other face."
"Hush, Armand! You are shortening the little time that we may

be together here on earth."
"Antoinette, will you come with me?"

"I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, not
through the selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or

enjoyment; pale and withered as I am, I live here for you, in the
breast of God. As God is just, you shall be happy----"

"Words, words all of it! Pale and withered? How if I want you?
How if I cannot be happy without you? Do you still think of

nothing but duty with your lover before you? Is he never to come
first and above all things else in your heart? In time past you

put social success, yourself, heaven knows what, before him; now
it is God, it is the welfare of my soul! In Sister Theresa I

find the Duchess over again, ignorant of the happiness of love,
insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of sensibility. You do

not love me; you have never loved me----"
"Oh, my brother----!"

"You do not wish to leave this tomb. You love my soul, do you
say? Very well, through you it will be lost forever. I shall

make away with myself----"
"Mother!" Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, "I have lied

to you; this man is my lover!"
The curtain fell at once. The General, in his stupor, scarcely

heard the doors within as they clanged.
"Ah! she loves me still!" he cried, understanding all the

sublimity of that cry of hers. "She loves me still. She must
be carried off. . . ."

The General left the island, returned to headquarters, pleaded
ill-health, asked for leave of absence, and forthwith took his

departure for France.
And now for the incidents which brought the two personages in

this Scene into their present relation to each other.
The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint-Germain is

neither a Quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor anything
else that admits of a precisedefinition. There are great houses

in the Place Royale, the Faubourg Saint-Honore, and the Chaussee
d'Antin, in any one of which you may breathe the same atmosphere

of Faubourg Saint-Germain. So, to begin with, the whole Faubourg
is not within the Faubourg. There are men and women born far

enough away from its influences who respond to them and take
their place in the circle; and again there are others, born

within its limits, who may yet be driven forth forever. For the
last forty years the manners, and customs, and speech, in a word,

the tradition of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has been to Paris
what the Court used to be in other times; it is what the Hotel

Saint-Paul was to the fourteenth century; the Louvre to the
fifteenth; the Palais, the Hotel Rambouillet, and the Place

Royale to the sixteenth; and lastly, as Versailles was to the
seventeenth and the eighteenth.

Just as the ordinary workaday Paris will always centre about some
point; so, through all periods of history, the Paris of the

nobles and the upper classes converges towards some particular
spot. It is a periodically recurrent phenomenon which presents

ample matter for reflection to those who are fain to observe or
describe the various social zones; and possibly an enquiry into

the causes that bring about this centralisation may do more than
merely justify the probability of this episode; it may be of

service to serious interests which some day will be more deeply
rooted in the commonwealth, unless, indeed, experience is as