sume, she let down the fastening chain,
and without her invitation I stepped within. I heard her startled "_Mon
Dieu!_" then her more deliberate exclamation of emotion. "My God!" she
said. She stood, with her hands caught at her throat, staring at me. I
laughed and held out a hand.

"Madam Baroness," I said, "how glad I am! Come, has not fate been kind
to us again?" I pushed shut the door behind me. Still without a word,
she stepped deeper into the room and stood looking at me, her hands
clasped now loosely and awkwardly, as though she were a country girl
surprised, and not the Baroness Helena von Ritz, toast or talk of more
than one capital of the world.

Yet she was the same. She seemed slightly thinner now, yet not less
beautiful. Her eyes were dark and brilliant as ever. The clear features
of her face were framed in the roll of her heavy locks, as I had seen
them last. Her garb, as usual, betokened luxury. She was robed as though
for some fete, all in white satin, and pale blue fires of stones shone
faintly at throat and wrist. Contrast enough she made to me, clad in
smoke-browned tunic of buck, with the leggings and moccasins of a
savage, my belt lacking but prepared for weapons.

I had not time to puzzle over the question of her errand here, why or
whence she had come, or what she purposed doing. I was occupied with the
sudden surprises which her surroundings offered.

"I see, Madam," said I, smiling, "that still I am only asleep and
dreaming. But how exquisite a dream, here in this wild country! How
unfit here am I, a savage, who introduce the one discordant note into so
sweet a dream!"

I gestured to my costume, gestured about me, as I took in the details of
the long room in which we stood. I swear it was the same as that in
which I had seen her at a similar hour in Montreal! It was the same I
had first seen in Washington!

Impossible? I am doubted? Ah, but do I not know? Did I not see? Here
were the pictures on the walls, the carved Cupids, the candelabra with
their prisms, the chairs, the couches! Beyond yonder satin curtains rose
the high canopy of the embroidery-covered couch, its fringed drapery
reaching almost to the deep pile of the carpets. True, opportunity had
not yet offered for the full concealment of these rude walls; yet, as my
senses convinced me even against themselves, here were the apartments of
Helena von Ritz, furnished as she had told me they always were at each
place she saw fit to h