to love. We have met and we have spoken, and we
part again. In half an hour we shall meet as friends, and never, never,
never again as we part now.'

She faced round upon him. Her fingers unlaced themselves and she stood
with both arms open to him. For one burning instant he held her.

'Your promise!' she whispered, in a frightened voice. 'Your promise,
Paul! Your promise!'

He suffered her to escape, and she drew herself away lingeringly, with
the same strange steadfast glance.

'Good-bye, my lover. Good-bye, my king. I shall never meet him again. I
shall come back to meet my friend.'

The words were but breathed so as to reach the ear, and she turned and
walked droopingly from the room. So might a bruised lily have been borne
away.

As for Paul, he had half an hour before the earliest guest was expected
to arrive, and he tried hard to compose himself. It was heavy work, for
he was constantly rolling down the hill of endeavour with exclamations
of wonder and worship. What a woman! What a pearl among women! What
candour! What courage! What tenderness! What purity! What beauty! He
was at the height of felicity and the depth of misery with such rapid
alternations that he lost the sense of difference, and could not
tell one from the other. But when the half-hour of waiting had almost
vanished he drank another glass of the wine his _deesse_ had commanded
for him, and was at least prepared to face the world with a pretence of
self-possession.

The guests began to arrive. There were but six more, and all were
masculine. The Baroness made a radiant entrance to greet them. She made
Paul known to each of them in turn, and all were men of mark. He heard
everywhere a name which had been long familiar to him, but the latest
comer of all, whom he had not found time to notice, was familiar in
something more than name. For it was Ralston--Ralston the great, who had
been the god of his boyhood--Ralston with his big gray head worn on one
shoulder or another, with the look of fighting wisdom in his face, quite
as of old.

'Mr. Ralston,' said the hostess, 'you must know my young friend Mr.
Armstrong. We saw his comedy together, you remember.'

Ralston remembered, and seemed to remember more than the name.

'We have met before this?' he asked.

'Once,' Paul replied.

'Castle Barfield?'

'Exactly.'

'If you'd rather shelve that----'

'Certainly not--between ourselves.'

The hostess took the escort of the eminent diplo