r farewell was conventional.
In the street, before they seated themselves in their carriage, Mrs.
Sheldam shook her head.

"Oh, my dear! What a woman! What a man! I have _such_ a story to tell
you. No wonder you admire these people. The wife is a genius--isn't she
handsome?--but the man--he is an angel!"

"I didn't see his wings, auntie," was the curt reply.

III

The Sheldams always stayed at the same hotel during their annual visits
to Paris. It was an old-fashioned house with an entrance in the Rue
Saint-Honore and another in the Rue de Rivoli. The girl sat on a small
balcony from which she could view the Tuileries Gardens without turning
her head; while looking farther westward she saw the Place de la
Concorde, its windy spaces a chessboard for rapid vehicles, whose
wheels, wet from the watered streets, ground out silvery fire in the
sun-rays of this gay June afternoon. Where the Avenue des Champs Elysees
began, a powdery haze enveloped the equipages, overblown with their
summer toilets, all speeding to Longchamps. It was racing day, and
Ermentrude, feigning a headache, had insisted that her uncle and aunt go
to the meeting. It would amuse them, she knew, and she wished to be
alone. Nearly a week had passed since the visit to Neuilly, and she had
been afraid to ask her aunt what Madame Keroulan had imparted to
her--afraid and also too proud. Her sensibility had been grievously
wounded by the plainly expressed feelings of Octave Keroulan. She had
reviewed without prejudice his behaviour, and she could not set down to
mere Latin gallantry either his words or his action. No, there was too
much intensity in both,--ah, how she rebelled at the brutal
disillusionment!--and there were, she argued, method and sequence in his
approach and attack. If she had been the average coquetting creature,
the offence might not have been so mortal. But, so she told herself
again and again,--as if to frighten away lurking darker thoughts, ready
to spring out and devour her good resolutions,--she had worshipped her
idol with reservations. His poetry, his philosophy, were so inextricably
blended that they smote her nerves like the impact of some bright
perfume, some sharp chord of modern music. Dangerously she had filed at
her emotions in the service of culture and she was now paying the
penalty for her ardent confidence. His ideas, vocal with golden
meanings, were never meant to be translated into the vernacular of life,
never to be