upon Fanchette's mantel that night. She filled my head with
false thoughts next day. I never meant while you were in Paris to do you
any wrong; but I put those jewels in my pocket, meaning to give them up
again; you found them, and I was made wretched."

Ralph made that dry, biting cough which he used to express unbelief. She
only bent her head and wept silently.

"When all was gone, poor me! I have found much sorrow in my little life,
but we are light-hearted in France, and we live and laugh again. Perhaps
you have made me more like one of your countrywomen. I do not
know--only that I can never be happy any more.

"Since we have dwelt apart my tempter has been to see me every day. He
has grand chambers which he will give me, and rich wardrobes, and a
watch, and a voiture. It is a dazzling picture for one who toils, going
all her days on foot, and lovely only to be deceived. But I hate that
man now, because he has come between you and me, and I have slept upon
my tears alone."

She melted again into a long, loud wail, and he proposed nervously that
they should walk into the gardens near by. He said little, and that
contemptuously, tossing his cane at the birds, much interested in a
statue, delighted with the visitors beneath the maroon trees; and she
followed him here and there, very weak, for she had eaten no breakfast,
and not so deceived but she knew that he labored to wound her. He asked
her into a cafe, cavalierly, and was very careful to make display of his
napoleons as he paid. He did not invite her, but she followed him to his
hotel again, and here, as if with terrible _ennui_, he threw himself
upon his bed and feigned to sleep, while she crouched at his table and
wrote him a contrite letter. It was sweetly and simply worded, and asked
that he should let her return to him for his few remaining days in
Paris. If he could not grant so much, might she speak to him in the
street; come to see him sometimes, if only to be reviled; love him,
though she could not hope to be loved? She gave him this note with her
face turned away, and faltered the request that he would think ere he
replied, and hurried to the balcony without, that she might not trouble
him with the presence of her sorrow.

How the street beneath her, into which she looked, had changed since the
nights when they talked together upon this balcony! There was bright
sunshine, but it fell leeringly, not laughingly, upon the columns of the
Odean Theatre,