ever."

"No, no. I see that now." She laughed without mirth, then drew a deep
breath and rose. "I am very tired," she said.

He was on his feet in an instant, all solicitude. But she waved him
wearily back.

"I think I will rest until it is time to go to the theatre." She moved
towards the door, dragging her feet a little. He sprang to open it, and
she passed out without looking at him.

Her so brief romantic dream was ended. The glorious world of fancy which
in the last hour she had built with such elaborate detail, over which it
should be her exalted destiny to rule, lay shattered about her feet, its
debris so many stumbling-blocks that prevented her from winning back to
her erstwhile content in Scaramouche as he really was.

Andre-Louis sat in the window embrasure, smoking and looking idly out
across the river. He was intrigued and meditative. He had shocked her.
The fact was clear; not so the reason. That he should confess himself
nameless should not particularly injure him in the eyes of a girl
reared amid the surroundings that had been Climene's. And yet that his
confession had so injured him was fully apparent.

There, still at his brooding, the returning Columbine discovered him a
half-hour later.

"All alone, my prince!" was her laughing greeting, which suddenly threw
light upon his mental darkness. Climene had been disappointed of hopes
that the wild imagination of these players had suddenly erected upon the
incident of his meeting with Aline. Poor child! He smiled whimsically at
Columbine.

"I am likely to be so for some little time," said he, "until it becomes
a commonplace that I am not, after all, a prince.

"Not a prince? Oh, but a duke, then--at least a marquis."

"Not even a chevalier, unless it be of the order of fortune. I am just
Scaramouche. My castles are all in Spain."

Disappointment clouded the lively, good-natured face.

"And I had imagined you..."

"I know," he interrupted. "That is the mischief." He might have gauged
the extent of that mischief by Climene's conduct that evening towards
the gentlemen of fashion who clustered now in the green-room between the
acts to pay their homage to the incomparable amoureuse. Hitherto she had
received them with a circumspection compelling respect. To-night she was
recklessly gay, impudent, almost wanton.

He spoke of it gently to her as they walked home together, counselling
more prudence in the future.

"We are not married yet," she tol