Olenska had risen and was saying good-bye.
He understood that in a moment she would be gone, and tried to remember
what he had said to her at dinner; but he could not recall a single
word they had exchanged.

She went up to May, the rest of the company making a circle about her
as she advanced. The two young women clasped hands; then May bent
forward and kissed her cousin.

"Certainly our hostess is much the handsomer of the two," Archer heard
Reggie Chivers say in an undertone to young Mrs. Newland; and he
remembered Beaufort's coarse sneer at May's ineffectual beauty.

A moment later he was in the hall, putting Madame Olenska's cloak about
her shoulders.

Through all his confusion of mind he had held fast to the resolve to
say nothing that might startle or disturb her. Convinced that no power
could now turn him from his purpose he had found strength to let events
shape themselves as they would. But as he followed Madame Olenska into
the hall he thought with a sudden hunger of being for a moment alone
with her at the door of her carriage.

"Is your carriage here?" he asked; and at that moment Mrs. van der
Luyden, who was being majestically inserted into her sables, said
gently: "We are driving dear Ellen home."

Archer's heart gave a jerk, and Madame Olenska, clasping her cloak and
fan with one hand, held out the other to him. "Good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye--but I shall see you soon in Paris," he answered aloud--it
seemed to him that he had shouted it.

"Oh," she murmured, "if you and May could come--!"

Mr. van der Luyden advanced to give her his arm, and Archer turned to
Mrs. van der Luyden. For a moment, in the billowy darkness inside the
big landau, he caught the dim oval of a face, eyes shining
steadily--and she was gone.

As he went up the steps he crossed Lawrence Lefferts coming down with
his wife. Lefferts caught his host by the sleeve, drawing back to let
Gertrude pass.

"I say, old chap: do you mind just letting it be understood that I'm
dining with you at the club tomorrow night? Thanks so much, you old
brick! Good-night."

"It DID go off beautifully, didn't it?" May questioned from the
threshold of the library.

Archer roused himself with a start. As soon as the last carriage had
driven away, he had come up to the library and shut himself in, with
the hope that his wife, who still lingered below, would go straight to
her room. But there she stood, pale and drawn, yet radiatin