entine glanced at Thaddeus with a vexed air, and remarked to her
husband: "He has been so sulky with me for the last two months that I
shall never ask him anything again."

"Oh, as for that," replied Paz, "I can't keep it out of the newspapers,
so I may as well tell you at once. The Emperor Nicholas has had the
grace to appoint me captain in a regiment which is to take part in the
expedition to Khiva."

"You are not going?" cried Adam.

"Yes, I shall go, my dear fellow. Captain I came, and captain I return.
We shall dine together to-morrow for the last time. If I don't start at
once for St. Petersburg I shall have to make the journey by land, and I
am not rich, and I must leave Malaga a little independence. I ought to
think of the only woman who has been able to understand me; she thinks
me grand, superior. I dare say she is faithless, but she would jump--"

"Through the hoop, for your sake and come down safely on the back of her
horse," said Clementine sharply.

"Oh, you don't know Malaga," said the captain, bitterly, with a
sarcastic look in his eyes which made Clementine thoughtful and uneasy.

"Good-by to the young trees of this beautiful Bois, which you Parisians
love, and the exiles who find a home here love too," he said,
presently. "My eyes will never again see the evergreens of the avenue de
Mademoiselle, nor the acacias nor the cedars of the rond-points. On
the borders of Asia, fighting for the Emperor, promoted to the command,
perhaps, by force of courage and by risking my life, it may happen that
I shall regret these Champs-Elysees where I have driven beside you, and
where you pass. Yes, I shall grieve for Malaga's hardness--the Malaga of
whom I am now speaking."

This was said in a manner that made Clementine tremble.

"Then you do love Malaga very much?" she asked.

"I have sacrificed for her the honor that no man should ever sacrifice."

"What honor?"

"That which we desire to keep at any cost in the eyes of our idol."

After that reply Thaddeus said no more; he was silent until, as they
passed a wooden building on the Champs Elysees, he said, pointing to it,
"That is the Circus."

He went to the Russian Embassy before dinner, and thence to the Foreign
office, and the next morning he had started for Havre before the count
and countess were up.

"I have lost a friend," said Adam, with tears in his eyes, when he heard
that Paz had gone,--"a friend in the true meaning of the word. I don't
kn