CHAPTER X.SHADOWS.
The tension on her nerves relaxed; there was the inevitable reaction.
Her knees were shaking under her, and she literally staggered into the room.
But Armand was already near her, down on both his knees this time, his arms clasping the delicate form that swayed like the slender stems of narcissi in the breeze.
"Oh! you must go out of Paris at once--at once," she said through sobs which no longer would be kept back.
"He'll return--I know that he will return--and you will not be safe until you are back in England." But he could not think of himself or of anything in the future.

He had forgotten Heron, Paris, the world; he could only think of her.
"I owe my life to you!" he murmured.

"Oh, how beautiful you are--how brave! How I love you!" It seemed that he had always loved her, from the moment that first in his boyish heart he had set up an ideal to worship, and then, last night, in the box of the theatre--he had his back turned toward the stage, and was ready to go--her voice had called him back; it had held him spellbound; her voice, and also her eyes....

He did not know then that it was Love which then and there had enchained him.

Oh, how foolish he had been! for now he knew that he had loved her with all his might, with all his soul, from the very instant that his eyes had rested upon her.
He babbled along--incoherently--in the intervals of covering her hands and the hem of her gown with kisses.