ot to be seen;
and Alexander, who had counted upon her half-given assent to dance the
cotillon with him, leaned disconsolately against a door, wondering
whether it could be worth while to sacrifice himself by engaging any one
in her place.

But Paul did not go home. He was too angry to be alone, and above all
too deeply wounded. Besides, his position required that he should stay
at least until supper was over, and it was almost a relief to move about
among the gorgeous costumes of all kinds which now issued from the
black, white, and red dominos, as a moth from the chrysalis. He spoke to
many people, saying the same thing to each, with the same mechanical
smile, as men do when they are obliged day after day to accomplish a
certain social task. But the effort was agreeable, and took off the
first keen edge of his wrath.

He had no need to ask the name of the man who had come between him and
the woman he loved. For weeks he had watched his brother and Hermione,
asking himself if their intimacy meant anything, and then driving away
the tormenting question, as though it contained something of disloyalty
to her. Now he remembered that for weeks this thing she had spoken must
have been in her mind, since she had always entreated him to wait a
little longer before speaking with her father. It had appeared such an
easy matter to her to wait; it was such a hard matter for him,--harder
than death it seemed now. For it was all over. He believed that she had
spoken her last word that night, and that in speaking of waiting still
longer she had only intended to make it less troublesome to break it
off. She had admitted that another man had come between them. Was
anything further needed? It followed, of course, that she loved this
other man--Alexander--better than himself. For the present he could see
only one side of the question, and he repeated to himself that all was
over, saying it again and again in his heart, as he went the rounds of
the room, asking each acquaintance he met concerning his or her plans
for the summer, commenting on the weather, and praising the successful
arrangement of the masked ball.

But Paul was ignorant of two things, in his present frame of mind. He
did not know that Hermione had been perfectly sincere in what she had
said, and he did not calculate upon his own nature. It was a simple
matter, in the impulse of the first moment, to say that all was at an
end, that he gave her up, even as she had reject