hen shall I see you again?"

"Did I not tell you," she said, moving to the bell, for this was
leave-taking--"that I shall be in Venice at Easter?"

Paul went out into the frosty air, and the bright wintry stars shone
down on him. Often on such nights he had looked up, wondering which was
his star, the star that guided his destiny. But to-night no such fancy
crossed his mind. He did not think of the stars. He did not think of
his destiny. His mind and soul were drenched in thought of one woman.
It had come at last, the great passion, the infinite desire. It had
come in a moment, wakened into quivering being by the caressive notes
of the dear French voice--"mais je suis jeune, et mon coeur est gueri,
et il lui manque affreusement de la foi, de la tendresse,
de--de"--adorable catch of emotion--"de l'amitie." Friendship, indeed!
For amitie all but her lips said amour. He walked beneath the wintry
stars, a man in a perfect dream.

Till then she had been but his Princess, the exquisite lady whom it had
amused to wander with him into the pays du tendre. She had been as far
above him as the now disregarded stars. She had come down with a
carnival domino over her sidereal raiment, and had met him on carnival
equality. He beau masque! He, knowing her, had fallen beneath her
starry spell. He was Paul Kegworthy, Paul Savelli, what you like; Paul
the adventurer, Paul the man born to great things. She was a beautiful
woman, bearing the title of Princess, the title that had haunted his
life since first the Vision Splendid dawned upon him as he lay on his
stomach eavesdropping and heard the words of the divinely-smelling
goddess who had given him his talisman, the cornelian heart. To "rank
himself with princes" had been the intense meaning of his life since
ragged and fiercely imaginative childhood. Odd circumstances had ranked
him with Sophie Zobraska. The mere romance of it had carried him off
his feet. She was a princess. She was charming. She frankly liked his
society. She seemed interested in his adventurous career. She was
romantic. He too. She was his Egeria. He had worshipped her
romantically, in a mediaeval, Italian way, and she had accepted the
homage. It had all been deliciously artificial. It had all been
Mademoiselle de Scudery. But to-day the real woman, casting off her
carnival domino, casting off too the sidereal raiment, had spoken, for
the first time, in simple womanhood, and her betraying eyes had told
things that