shall love you all
my life! Try and forget me. I am acting for the best. Do not write
to Paris or endeavor to find me. If it is God's will, we shall
never meet again. I can scarcely see what I am writing for my
tears. So good-by, my Alec! Be brave! Forgive me, and, in the years
to come, try to forget our few days of happiness together.

Yours ever,

JOAN.

He stood there stricken, almost paralyzed with the suddenness of the
blow, wondering dumbly why Joan's hand should have inflicted it. The
frightened Frenchwoman dared not speak or move. She watched him with
that impersonal fear so readily aroused in one of her class by the
terrifying spectacle of a strong man in his agony. At last he moved
listlessly, as though his limbs had just been released from the rack. He
held the letter under the lamp again and read it a second time, word for
word. He seemed to be forcing himself to accept it as truth. This young
King, so valiant, so resourceful, so prompt in action and judgment,
could devise no plan, no means of rescue from the abyss. After an
interval that neither the man nor the woman could measure, he turned his
strained, staring eyes on the shrinking Pauline.

"Have I ever done you any harm?" he said in the low voice of utmost
despair.

"Me, monsieur?" she gasped. "You harm me? No, indeed, I was only too
proud to think my dear mistress should have won such a husband."

"Then you will answer my questions truly," he went on, his eyes
devouring the woman's homely features as though he would fain seek some
comfort therein.

"Oh yes, indeed, monsieur. Ask me anything. It is not that I have much
to tell. Mademoiselle said, 'Give this letter to the King himself. Let
it touch no other hand.' That is all, monsieur. She was weeping when she
wrote it. Monsieur Poluski told me what to do to-morrow about my own
journey. See, here are my tickets."

"Poluski!" said Alec, and the words came dully. "Has he too betrayed
me?"

"He has gone with my mistress," sobbed Pauline. "It is not that they
have betrayed you, monsieur; for mademoiselle looked like to die, and I
have never seen any one more disturbed than Monsieur Poluski. He raved
like a maniac when I asked him for one word of explanation."

"But what does it mean, woman? Do you understand what has happened? My
promised wife has fled, bidding me not to dream of seeing her again, and
with her has gone one of the few men alive