ugh the heavy
draperies into the room beyond, leaving but a breath of the faint,
sweet perfume to hallow the air.

With heart bowed down Paul passed out through the great doorway, the
words from an old play ringing through his brain:

"She was lovable, and he loved her; but he was not lovable, and she
loved him not."

CHAPTER XVII

With the many details of the evening that Paul spent, I will not weary
you, dear reader. Wandering about the boulevards he went, like one
walking in a dream, at times stopping to rest at some quiet table
apart from the throng of merry-makers, entirely disregardful of the
laughing faces, the friendly glances that now and then searched him
out. Like a canker worm misery gnawed at his heart.

He stopped at a cable office and despatched to his mother, the Lady
Henrietta, a message which, though she knew it not, was pregnant with
meaning.

"Delayed indefinitely in Paris."

Paul wondered afterward, as he sat quietly sipping his coffee in a
small _cafe_, that in the little breast of one mortal there could be
such room for infinite wretchedness. Within his heart that night was
nothing but darkness and pain. He felt as though his very heart was
breaking and bleeding. The sweat lay cold upon his brow and he sighed
deeply.

Alas it was all true. He loved her, though she loved him not; he gave
her all, and she gave him nothing; and yet he could not part from her.
He could not help his unlucky passion.

Contrary to his wont, he did not, as he sat alone, dream his way back
into the past. He looked rather into the mystic haze of the future,
and heard not the confused sound of the voices of men and women, nor
the gay music which filled the place.

Paul, after all, was no seer. As to what the outcome would be, all the
dreaming he might do would tell him nothing. He rose and proceeded to
his _hotel_.

* * * * *

But to return for a moment to the source of Paul's unhappiness. He
might not have been so wretched as he sat in the little _cafe_ could
he have seen her in her boudoir, now weeping with wild uncontrollable
sobs, now smiling radiantly through her tears.

For Mademoiselle Natalie Vseslavitch was at once the happiest and the
most miserable of women. She had taken advantage of the privilege of
her sex when she feigned to doubt Paul's fervent declaration that
afternoon. She _did_ believe him. Her keen feminine instinct told her
that his simple "