was well satisfied.

It was not to be expected, however, that Orsino should take Maria
Consuelo literally at her word, and cease from visiting her all at once.
If not really in love with her, he was at least so much interested in
her that he sorely missed the daily half hour or more which he had been
used to spend in her society.

Three several times he went to her hotel at the accustomed hour, and
each time he was told by the porter that she was at home; but on each
occasion, also, when he sent up his card, the hotel servant returned
with a message from the maid to the effect that Madame d'Aranjuez was
tired and did not receive. Orsino's pride rebelled equally against
making a further attempt and against writing a letter requesting an
explanation. Once only, when he was walking alone she passed him in a
carriage, and she acknowledged his bow quietly and naturally, as though
nothing had happened. He fancied she was paler than usual, and that
there were shadows under her eyes which he had not formerly noticed.
Possibly, he thought, she was really not in good health, and the excuses
made through her maid were not wholly invented. He was conscious that
his heart beat a little faster as he watched the back of the brougham
disappearing in the distance, but he did not feel an irresistible
longing to make another and more serious attempt to see her. He tried to
analyse his own sensations, and it seemed to him that he rather dreaded
a meeting than desired it, and that he felt a certain humiliation for
which he could not account. In the midst of his analysis, his cigarette
went out and he sighed. He was startled by such an expression of
feeling, and tried to remember whether he had ever sighed before in his
life, but if he had, he could not recall the circumstances. He tried to
console himself with the absurd supposition that he was sleepy and that
the long-drawn breath had been only a suppressed yawn. Then he walked
on, gazing before him into the purple haze that filled the deep street
just as the sun was setting, and a vague sadness and longing touched him
which had no place in his catalogue of permissible emotions and which
were as far removed from the cold cynicism which he admired in others
and affected in himself as they were beyond the sphere of his analysis.

There is an age, not always to be fixed exactly, at which the really
masculine nature craves the society of womankind, in one shape or
another, as a necessity of