uties of the day.

The McVeighs had gone to Italy, the mother to visit a relative, the
son to view the late battle fields on the other side of the Pyrenees
and acquaint himself with military matters wherever he found them.

He had called on the Marquise the day following the fete at the Hotel
Dulac. She had quite recovered her slight indisposition of the
preceding evening, and there had been no hesitation about receiving
him. She was alone, and she met him with the fine, cool, gracious
manner reserved for the people who were of no importance in her life.

Looking at her, listening to her, he could scarcely believe this could
be the girl who had provoked him into a declaration of love less than
a day ago, and in whose eyes he had surprised a fervor responding to
his own. She called him Lieutenant McVeigh, with an utter disregard of
the fact that she had ever called him anything else.

When in sheer desperation he referred to their first meeting, she
listened with a chill little smile.

"Yes," she agreed; "Fontainbleau was beautiful in the spring time.
Maman was especially fond of it. She, herself, had been telling a
friend lately of the very unconventional meeting under the bushes of
the Mademoiselle and Monsieur Incognito, and he--the friend--had
thought it delightfully amusing, good enough for the thread of a
comedy."

Then she sent some kindly message to Mrs. McVeigh, but refused to see
the wonder--the actual pain--in the eyes where before she had
remembered those half slumberous smiles, or that brief space of
passionate pleading. He interrupted some cool remark by rising.

"It is scarcely worth while--all this," he said, abruptly. "Had you
closed your doors against me after last night I should have
understood--I should have gone away adoring you just the same. But to
open them, to receive me, and then--"

His voice trembled in spite of himself. All at once he appeared so
much more boyish than ever before--so helpless in a sort of misery he
could not account for, she turned away her head.

"With the ocean between us my love could not have hurt you. You might
have let me keep that." He had recovered control of his voice and his
eyes swept over her from head to foot like blue lightning. "I bid you
good-day, Madame."

She made an inclination of the head, but did not speak. She had
reached the limit of her self control. His words, "_You might have let
me keep that_," were an accusation she dared not discuss.