The stronger feeling had not yet risen up in him; it came later when tragedy encompassed him and brought passion to sudden maturity.

Just now he was merely yielding himself up to the intoxicating moment, with all the abandonment, all the enthusiasm of the Latin race.

There was no reason why he should not bend the knee before this exquisite little cameo, that by its very presence was giving him an hour of perfect pleasure and of aesthetic joy.
Outside the world continued its hideous, relentless way; men butchered one another, fought and hated.

Here in this small old-world salon, with its faded satins and bits of ivory-tinted lace, the outer universe had never really penetrated.

It was a tiny world--quite apart from the rest of mankind, perfectly peaceful and absolutely beautiful.
If Armand had been allowed to depart from here now, without having been the cause as well as the chief actor in the events that followed, no doubt that Mademoiselle Lange would always have remained a charming memory with him, an exquisite bouquet of violets pressed reverently between the leaves of a favourite book of poems, and the scent of spring flowers would in after years have ever brought her dainty picture to his mind.
He was murmuring pretty words of endearment; carried away by emotion, his arm stole round her waist; he felt that if another tear came like a dewdrop rolling down her cheek he must kiss it away at its very source.
Passion was not sweeping them off their feet--not yet, for they were very young, and life had not as yet presented to them its most unsolvable problem.
But they yielded to one another, to the springtime of their life, calling for Love, which would come presently hand in hand with his grim attendant, Sorrow.
Even as Armand's glowing face was at last lifted up to hers asking with mute lips for that first kiss which she already was prepared to give, there came the loud noise of men's heavy footsteps tramping up the old oak stairs, then some shouting, a woman's cry, and the next moment Madame Belhomme, trembling, wide-eyed, and in obvious terror, came rushing into the room.
"Jeanne! Jeanne! My child! It is awful! It is awful! Mon Dieu--mon Dieu! What is to become of us ?" She was moaning and lamenting even as she ran in, and now she threw her apron over her face and sank into a chair, continuing her moaning and her lamentations.
Neither Mademoiselle nor Armand had stirred.