uickly down the
Rue de Rivoli, right into the heart of that commercial quarter which was
the Paris of Madame de Sevigne, of the bitter witty dwarf, Scarron, of
Ninon de l'Enclos, and, more lately, of Victor Hugo. There, dismissing
their cab, they had turned into that still, stately square, once the old
Place Royale, now the Place des Vosges, of which each arcaded house
garners memories of passionate romance.

Walking slowly up and down the solitary garden there, the two had
discussed the coming August, and Margaret Pargeter had admitted, with a
rather weary sigh, that she was as yet quite ignorant whether her
husband intended to yacht, to shoot, or to travel,--whether he meant to
take her with him, or to leave her at some seaside place with the boy.

As she spoke, in the low melodious voice which still had the power to
thrill the man by her side as it had had in the earlier days of their
acquaintance, Mrs. Pargeter said no word that all the world might not
have heard, yet, underlying all she said, his questions and her answers,
was the mute interrogation--which of the alternatives discussed held out
the best chance, to Vanderlyn and herself, of being together?

At last, quite suddenly, Mrs. Pargeter, turning and looking up into her
companion's face, had said something which Laurence Vanderlyn had felt
to be strangely disconcerting; for a brief moment she lifted the veil
which she had herself so deliberately and for so long thrown over their
ambiguous relation--"Ah! Laurence," she exclaimed with a sigh, "the way
of the transgressor is hard!"

Then, speaking so quietly that for a moment he did not fully understand
the amazing nature of the proposal she was making to him, she had
deliberately offered to go away with him--for a week. The way in which
this had come about had been strangely simple; looking back, Vanderlyn
could scarcely believe that his memory was playing him true....

From the uncertain future they had come back to the immediate present,
and Mrs. Pargeter said something of having promised her only intimate
friend, a Frenchwoman much older than herself, a certain Madame de Lera,
to go and spend a few days in a villa near Paris--"If you do that," he
said, "then I think I may as well go down to Orange and see the house
I've just bought there."

She had turned on him with a certain excitement in her manner. "You've
bought it? That strange, beautiful place near Orange where you used to
stay when you were st