rling by outside the
window.

There ensued a month of conscientious sightseeing in Paris, and that
unfriendly city afforded him only one glimpse of the Countess. She
whizzed by him in a big touring-car one afternoon as he stood on an
"isle of safety" at the foot of the Champs Elysees. Cooley was driving
the car. The raffish, elderly Englishman (whose name, Mellin knew,
was Sneyd) sat with him, and beside Madame de Vaurigard in the tonneau
lolled a gross-looking man--unmistakably an American--with a jovial,
red, smooth-shaven face and several chins. Brief as the glimpse was,
Mellin had time to receive a distinctly disagreeable impression of this
person, and to wonder how Heaven could vouchsafe the society of Madame
de Vaurigard to so coarse a creature.

All the party were dressed as for the road, gray with dust, and to all
appearances in a merry mood. Mellin's heart gave a leap when he saw that
the Countess recognized him. Her eyes, shining under a white veil, met
his for just the instant before she was quite by, and when the machine
had passed a little handkerchief waved for a moment from the side of the
tonneau where she sat.

With that he drew the full breath of Romance.

He had always liked to believe that _"grandes dames"_ leaned back in
the luxurious upholstery of their victorias, landaulettes, daumonts or
automobiles with an air of inexpressible though languid hauteur. The
Newport letter in the Cranston Telegraph often referred to it. But
the gayety of that greeting from the Countess' little handkerchief
was infinitely refreshing, and Mellin decided that animation was more
becoming than hauteur--even to a _"grande dame."_

That night he wrote (almost without effort) the verses published in the
Cranston Telegraph two weeks later. They began:

_Marquise, ma belle_, with your kerchief of
lace
Awave from your flying car,
And your slender hand--

The hand to which he referred was the same which had arrested his
gondola and his heart simultaneously, five days ago, in Venice. He was
on his way to the station when Madame de Vaurigard's gondola shot out
into the Grand Canal from a narrow channel, and at her signal both boats
paused.

"Ah! but you fly away!" she cried, lifting her eyebrows mournfully,
as she saw the steamer-trunk in his gondola. "You are goin' return to
America?"

"No. I'm just leaving for Rome."

"Well, in three day' _I_ am goin' to Rome!" She clapped her hands