Denzil recoiled a step backward, then with an impulsive movement strode close up to him, his face unnaturally flushed and his eyes glittering with an evil fire.

"You--you love her! What!--in one short hour, you--who have often boasted to me of having no heart, no eyes for women except as models for your canvas,--you say now that you love a woman whom you have never seen before to-night!"

"Stop!" returned Gervase somewhat moodily, "I am not so sure about that. I HAVE seen her before, though where I cannot tell. But the fire that stirs my pulses now seems to spring from some old passion suddenly revived, and the eyes of the woman we are both mad for--well! they do not inspire holiness, my dear friend! No,-- neither in you nor in me! Let us be honest with each other. There is something vile in the composition of Madame la Princesse, and it responds to something equally vile in ourselves. We shall be dragged down by the force of it,--tant pis pour nous! I am sorrier for you than for myself, for you are a good fellow, au fond; you have what the world is learning to despise--sentiment. I have none; for as I told you before, I have no heart, but I have passions--tigerish ones--which must be humored; in fact, I make it my business in life to humor them."