s it more
than that? With a slight movement of her tapering hand she dismissed
the liveried servant stationed behind her, and stayed on, with food
and wine untouched. And Paul knew it not.

So near to us can lie the hidden path of our strange destinies until
the appointed hour.

CHAPTER III

The next morning Paul breakfasted on the terrace. The gay greetings of
old friends, the pleasant babble in the breakfast room ill suited his
reflective mood.

And as he sat alone under the fragrant pergola enjoying his cigarette
and dividing his attention between his coffee and the Paris Edition of
the _Herald_, a pale, dark-haired lady passed by as she sought the
terrace for an early stroll. Paul's eyes were on his paper at that
moment--and if the lady's well-bred glance lingered on him for a brief
instant as he turned the pages of the daily, he was all unconscious of
her presence.

Perhaps the lady may have seen something about the strong, wholesome,
well-groomed Englishman that pleased her, perhaps she was simply glad
to be alive upon that glorious morning, with the bracing breeze
blowing fresh from the lake, and the sun sending his welcome rays down
upon the mountainside. At all events, her lips parted in the merest
shadow of a smile as she walked along the gravelled path with the
veriest air of a princess.

Alas! the smile and the dainty picture which the dark-haired lady made
as she moved down the flower bordered path in the sunshine, her
morning gown clinging gracefully about her slender figure, were alike
lost on the engrossed Paul. With his eyes glued to the criticism of a
sharpened writer on the last measure before Parliament, he read on,
all oblivious to his surroundings. Even here, at his beloved Lucerne,
the man of affairs could not escape the thrall of the life into which
he had thrown the whole effort of his fine mind.

Sir Paul had not quite finished the breezy article when, with an all
pervading blast of a sweet-toned, but unnecessarily loud Gabriel horn,
a big green touring car came dashing up to the gate of the little
hotel, and with a final roar and sputter, and agonized shriek of
rudely applied brakes, came to a sudden stop. From it there emerged,
like a monster crab crawling from a mossy shell, a huge form in a
bright green coat--a heavy man with a fat, colourless face and puffy
eyes, and Paul, glancing up at the ostentatious approach, recognized
in him a _nouveau riche_ whom a political frien