Never yet had she been able to regard him as belonging to the same order of beings as herself-not even when she had kissed his unconscious lips that evening on the Ridge road.

An immeasurable gulf had seemed to yawn between them--the gulf between her nobility and his base origin.

And now, as her carriage trundled out of Paris and took the dusty high road, she shuddered, and her cheeks burned with shame at the memory of the wrong that by such thoughts she had done him.

Was she, indeed, the nobler?
By accident of birth, perhaps, but by nature proper he was assuredly the noblest man that ever woman bore.
In the Place de la Revolution a gruesome engine they called the guillotine was levelling all things, and fast establishing the reign of absolute equality.

But with all the swift mowing of its bloody scythe, not half so fast did it level men as Mademoiselle de Bellecour's thoughts were doing that afternoon.
So marked was the disorder in her countenance when she reached Choisy that even unobservant Ombreval whom continuous years of self-complacency had rendered singularly obtuse--could not help but notice it, and--fearing, no doubt, that this agitation might in some way concern himself--he even went the length of questioning her, his voice sounding the note of his alarm.
"It is nothing," she answered, in a dejected voice.