As the dawn loves the sunlight, I love thee. —Swinburne.
Papa Legros at first had been too dazed to protest. Truly his loving heart had been for hours on the rack at thought of the awful task which lay before him—the opening of his child's eyes to the monstrous trick played upon her by the man to whom her innocent heart had turned in perfect love and in perfect trust. He, the father, who worshipped this dainty, delicately-nurtured daughter, who had spent the past twenty years of an arduous life in trying to smooth away every unevenness from the child's pathway of life, now suddenly saw himself like unto the scarlet-clad executioner, rope and branding irons in hand, forced to bind his beloved one on the rack, and himself to apply the searing torture of sorrow and of shame to her soul.
 
The child's calm words as she stood confronting the miscreant had almost brought relief. Why indeed should not the villain accomplish his own unmasking? Papa Legros hating the man who had done him and his child an infinite wrong, had a sufficiency of perception in him to realise, with that subtle cruelty of which the meek are alone capable, that he could not inflict more exquisite torture on his enemy than by forcing him to stand self-convicted before the child.
 
Just for the moment—and truly he may be forgiven for it—all that was good and kind in the gentle nature of the tailor had been ousted by his wrath as a father and[220] as a man. He had found himself unable to strike the liar just now; but he longed for the power to torture his very soul, to bring him to the dust in sorrow and humiliation, to see the proud head down in the mud of abject shame. Great God! did you not know that Papa Legros had learned to love this man like he would his own son, and that the grief which he felt was in part for Rose Marie and in part for the miscreant who had twined himself around his heartstrings, and whom he cherished the while he longed to chastise him with infinite cruelty?
 
"Father dear," said Rose Marie after a slight pause, "will you not allow me to speak with milor alone?"
 
"I would not trust thee one second in his keeping, child, now I know him for what he is."
 
"You need have no fear, dear," she rejoined calmly, "and 'twere best methinks for us all if milor were to tell me himself all that I ought to know."
 
The candle flickered low, and Michael stood back amidst the shadow; thus the good tailor failed to see if his own shaft had gone home—if it had pierced that armour of stolid English indifference which the descendant of Gallic forebears found so difficult to comprehend.
 
Certain it is that Michael raised no protest, and that not even a sigh escaped him as this final insult was hurled at him with the utmost refinement of vengeful cruelty.
 
Rose Marie went up to her father and placed her small cool hands on his. Then with gentle persuasion she drew him up. He yielded to her, for vaguely at the bottom of his heart, he knew that he could trust the man whom he loved and hated, yet even now could not wholly despise. For one moment as father and daughter stood side by side, he took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. She rested against him cold and placid, and when he released her[221] from his embrace she took his rough toil-worn hand and kissed it tenderly. Then with supreme yet irresistible gentleness she led him out of the room.
 
As he passed close to Michael he held out the fateful letter to him.
 
"You will show her that," he almost commanded.
 
"An you wish it," replied the other, as he took the letter from him.
 
A curious instinct prompted Michael to blow out the flickering light, just as Rose Marie, having closed the door behind her father, turned back into the room. He went up to her, but she retreated a step or two at his approach, and of her own accord went to the window seat, there where a brief hour ago she had sat with him in perfect communion and perfect happiness.
 
The casement was still open, and the moon which had been so fitful throughout the evening poured her cold radiance straight on the dainty silhouette of the girl, just as she had done awhile ago, ere the gates of paradise were closed and the angels had ceased to sing their glad hosannas! Outside, the sighing of the reeds and the moaning of the wind in the young acacias made a sound as of innumerable feet of restless spirits stirring the dead leaves of an unforgettable past.
 
"That letter, milor," said Rose Marie, "will you give it me—since my father hath so commanded."
 
Without a word he handed the paper to her, and when he saw that she could not read it—for the room was dark and the rays of the moon not sufficiently bright—he took out his tinder-box and relighted the guttering candle. Then as the wind blew the feeble flame hither and thither he shielded it with his hand, and held the candle so that she might read and yet not move from that window seat.
 
[222] She read the letter through to the end, and while she read he could see the top of her head bent down to the paper, and the wealth of those fair curls which he would never again be allowed to kiss.
 
When she had finished reading, she looked up and he threw the candle far away out through the window.
 
"Then you had lied to me," was all that she said; and she said it so calmly, so quietly, like the true snow maiden which she had once more become, now that he who alone had the power to turn the snow to living fire, was proved to be treacherous and false. Then she folded up the letter and slipped it under her kerchief.
 
Stately and tall as the water lilies on the pond which he had once described to her—she drew up her slender figure and held her little head erect. She did not look in his direction but rose slowly and turned to go out of the room.
 
"Rose Marie," he called out to her in an involuntary moan of agony.
 
Instinctively his hand went out to her as she passed, and clutched the crumpled wedding dress which seemed to wrap her in, now like a shroud. She tried to disengage her gown, but as he held it tight she desisted, standing there cold and impassive, a woman turned to ice.
 
"Rose Marie!" he whispered, "my own little snowdrop, will you be so unyielding now? Awhile ago do you remember, you yielded to the sweetness of a first kiss?"
 
"And yet you lied to me," she said slowly, tonelessly, the while her eyes sought the distant horizon far away, where astride on the cold grey mists unreached by the tender light of the moon, her dreams of happiness were fleeting quickly away.
 
He drew himself up and caught her to him with a masterful gesture of possession. He felt her body rigid and im[223]passive at his touch, stiffening in a backward motion away from him behind that massive stone wall of awful finality which had so mercilessly risen between her and him. He felt that he was losing her, that she was slipping away from him—slipping—up, up to some cold and unresponsive heaven, peopled with stern angels, whose great white wings would soon enclose her and hide her from him forever. He felt that he was losing her, not with that same bitter-sweet sense of sadness as he did just now when the savour of her exquisite lips still clung to his own, and she retreated out of his sight like a perfect vision of beauty.
 
Now an almost savage longing was in him not to let her go, to keep her to him at any cost, any sacrifice, even that of his own self-control. There was enough power in his own ardent love for her so to bind her to him that she could never, never leave him.
 
&q............