Her voice did not quite sustain the lighter note--the emotion his visit
was causing her was too great. He brought with him into her retreat not
so much a flood of memories as of sensations. He was a man whose image
time with difficulty obliterates, whose presence was a shining thing: so
she had grown to value it in proportion as she had had less of it. She
did inevitably recall the last time she had seen him, in the little
Western city, and how he had overwhelmed her, invaded her with doubts
and aroused the spirit which had possessed her to fight fiercely for its
foothold. And to-day his coming might be likened to the entrance of
a great physician into the room of a distant and lonely patient whom
amidst wide ministrations he has not forgotten. She saw now that he
had been right. She had always seen it, clearly indeed when he had been
beside her, but the spirit within her had been too strong, until
now. Now, when it had plundered her soul of treasures--once so little
valued--it had fled. Such were her thoughts.

The great of heart undoubtedly possess this highest quality of the
physician,--if the statement may thus be put backhandedly,--and Peter
Erwin instinctively understood the essential of what was going on within
her. He appeared to take a delight in the fancy she had suggested; that
he had brought a portion of the newer world to France.

"Not a piece of the Atlantic coast, certainly," he replied. "One of the
muddy islands, perhaps, of the Mississippi."

"All the more representative," she said. "You seem to have taken
possession of Paris, Peter--not Paris of you. You have annexed the seat
of the Capets, and brought democracy at last into the Faubourg."

"Without a Reign of Terror," he added quizzically.

"If you are not ambassador, what are you?" she asked. "I have expected
at any moment to read in the Figaro that you were President of the
United States."

"I am the American tourist," he declared, "with Baedeker for my Bible,
who desires to be shown everything. And I have already discovered that
the legend of the fabulous wealth of the Indies is still in force here.
There are many who are willing to believe that in spite of my modest
appearance--maybe because of it--I have sailed over in a galleon
filled with gold. Already I have been approached from every side by
confidential gentlemen who announced that they spoke English--one of
them said 'American'--who have offered to show me many things, and who
hav