"Poor little woman!"

She made to thrust him away. He said:

"You must not be afraid of me. I love you."

Then the tears trickled down her pale cheeks. He knelt down by her and
kissed--

"_La lunga man d'ogni bellezza piena_...."

--the long delicate hands on which two tears had fallen.

He sat down again, and she recovered herself and calmly went on with her
story:

An author had at last launched her. He had discovered in the strange
little creature a daimon, a genius,--and, even better for his purpose,
"a dramatic type, a new woman, representative of an epoch." Of course,
he made her his mistress after so many others had done the same. And she
let him take her, as she had suffered the others, without love, and even
with the opposite of love. But he had made her famous: and she had done
the same for him.

"And now," said Christophe, "the others cannot do anything to you: you
can do what you like with them."

"You think so?" she said bitterly.

Then she told him of Fate's other mockery,--her passion for a knave whom