and the river echoes where the
weir foams and the willow droops.

The tapestry hanging upon the walls did not distract from this scheme.
Taken from some chateau of Provence, and old almost as the story of
Nicolete, it showed ladies listening to shepherds who played on flutes,
capering lambs, daffodils blowing to the winds of early spring under a sky
gray and broken by rifts of blue.

Adams scarcely noticed the room, or the tapestry, or the food placed
before him; he was entirely absorbed by two things, Maxine and Captain
Berselius.

Berselius's presence at the table evidently cast silence and a cloak of
restraint upon the women. You could see that the servants who served him
dreaded him to the very tips of their fingers, and, though he was chatting
easily and in an almost paternal manner, his wife and daughter had almost
the air of children, nervous, and on their very best behaviour. This was
noticeable, especially, in Madame Berselius. The beautiful, indolent,
arrogant face became a very humble face indeed when she turned it on the
man who was evidently, literally, her lord and master. Maxine, though
oppressed by the presence, wore a different air; she seemed abstracted and
utterly unconscious of what a beautiful picture she made against the
old-world tapestry of spring.

Her eyes sometimes met the American's. They scarcely spoke to each other
once during the meal, yet their eyes met almost as frequently as though
they had been conversing. As a matter of fact, Adams was a new type of man
to her, and on that account interesting; very different was this son of
Anak, with the restful, forceful face, to the curled and scented dandies
of the Chaussee d'Antin, the "captains with the little moustaches," the
frequenters of the _foyer de Ballet_, the cigarette-dried mummies of the
Grand Club. It was like the view of a mountain to a person who had only
known hills.

Maxine, in her turn, was a new type of woman to Adams. This perfect flower
from the Parisian hot-house was the rarest and most beautiful thing he had
met in the way of womanhood. She seemed to him a rose only just unfolded,
unconscious of its own freshness and beauty as of the dew upon its petals,
and saying to the world, by the voice of its own loveliness, "Behold me!"

"Well," said Captain Berselius, as he took leave of his guest in the
smoking room, "I will let you know to-night the day and hour of our
departure. All my business in Paris will be settled thi