ance upward had perhaps not the tender
significance that Paula imagined, the last look impelled by any such
whiff of emotion having been the lingering one he bestowed upon her in
passing out of the room. Unluckily for the prospects of this attachment,
Paula's conduct towards him now, as a result of misrepresentation,
had enough in common with her previous silence at Nice to make it not
unreasonable as a further development of that silence. Moreover, her
social position as a woman of wealth, always felt by Somerset as a
perceptible bar to that full and free eagerness with which he would fain
have approached her, rendered it impossible for him to return to the
charge, ascertain the reason of her coldness, and dispel it by an
explanation, without being suspected of mercenary objects. Continually
does it happen that a genial willingness to bottle up affronts is
set down to interested motives by those who do not know what generous
conduct means. Had she occupied the financial position of Miss De
Stancy he would readily have persisted further and, not improbably, have
cleared up the cloud.

Having no further interest in Carlsruhe, Somerset decided to leave by an
evening train. The intervening hour he spent in wandering into the thick
of the fair, where steam roundabouts, the proprietors of wax-work
shows, and fancy-stall keepers maintained a deafening din. The
animated environment was better than silence, for it fostered in him
an artificial indifference to the events that had just happened--an
indifference which, though he too well knew it was only destined to be
temporary, afforded a passive period wherein to store up strength that
should enable him to withstand the wear and tear of regrets which would
surely set in soon. It was the case with Somerset as with others of his
temperament, that he did not feel a blow of this sort immediately; and
what often seemed like stoicism after misfortune was only the neutral
numbness of transition from palpitating hope to assured wretchedness.

He walked round and round the fair till all the exhibitors knew him by
sight, and when the sun got low he turned into the Erbprinzen-Strasse,
now raked from end to end by ensaffroned rays of level light. Seeking
his hotel he dined there, and left by the evening train for Heidelberg.

Heidelberg with its romantic surroundings was not precisely the place
calculated to heal Somerset's wounded heart. He had known the town of
yore, and his recoll