The young fellow in his jaunty new clothes shook as if he had the ague.
He had touched her. For one minute she had been his!

He turned and walked quickly across the Platz.

Lucy, left alone, was full of remorse. She looked down into her heart;
she had forgotten to do it before. No, not a spark for him to blow
into a flame; not a single warm thought of him!

The girl was ashamed of herself. He might be a cad, but he was real;
his honest love possessed him body and soul. It was a matter of
expediency to her; a thing to debate with herself, to dally over, with
paltry pros and cons.

Miss Vance came hurriedly up the street, an open letter in her hand.
Lucy ran to meet her.

"What is it? You have heard bad news?"

"I suppose we ought not to call it that. It is from George Waldeaux.
They have a son, two months old. He tells it as a matter for
rejoicing."

"Oh, yes," said Lucy feebly.

"They are at Vannes--in Brittany. He has a cough. He seems to know
nobody--to have no friends, and, I suspect, not much money. He is
terribly depressed." Clara folded the letter thoughtfully. "He asks
me to tell his mother that the baby has come."

"Where is his mother?"

"In Switzerland."

"Why is she not with him?" demanded Lucy angrily. "Wandering about
gathering edelweiss, while he is alone and wretched!"

"He has his wife. You probably do not understand the case fully," said
Clara coldly. "I am going to wire to his mother now." She turned away
and Lucy stood irresolute, her hand clutching the shaggy head of the
stone beast beside her.

"I can give him money. I'll go to him. He needs me!" she said aloud.
Then her whole body burned with shame. She--Lucy Dunbar, good proper
Lucy, whose conscience hurt her if she laid her handkerchiefs away awry
in her drawer, nursing a criminal passion for a married man!

She went slowly back to the inn. "He has his wife," she told herself.
"I am nothing to him. I doubt if he would know me if he met me on the
street." She tried to go back to her easy-going mannerly little
thoughts, but there was something strange and fierce behind them that
would not down.

Jean came presently to the salle. "I have had a letter too," she said.
"The girl who writes came from Pond City. She was in the same atelier
in Paris with George. She says: 'Your friends the Waldeaux have come
to grief by a short cut. They flung money about for a few months as if
they were backed by the B