night, though to me you have
behaved very like an iceberg."

We parted in tears and kisses, and I lived for some weeks with that
sense of having been a Nero, till two months after I received a much
glazed and silvered card to the usual effect.

And so I ceased to repine for the wound I had made in the heart of
Semiramis Wilcox.

Of another whom I met and loved in that brief month in Paris, I cherish
tenderer memories. Prim little Pauline Deschapelles! How clearly I can
still see the respectable brass plate on the door of your little
flat--"Mademoiselle Deschapelles--Modes et Robes;" and indeed the
"modes et robes" were true enough. For you were in truth a very
hard-working little dressmaker, and I well remember how impressed I was
to sit beside you, as you plied your needle on some gown that must be
finished by the evening, and meditate on the quaint contrast between
your almost Puritanic industry and your innocent love of pleasure. I
don't think I ever met a more conscientious little woman than little
Pauline Deschapelles.

There was but one drawback to our intercourse. She didn't know a word
of English, and I couldn't speak a word of French. So we had to make
shift to love without either language. But sometimes Pauline would
throw down her stitching in amused impatience, and, going to her dainty
secretaire, write me a little message in the simplest baby
French--which I would answer in French which would knit her brows for a
moment or two, and then send her off in peals of laughter.

It WAS French! I know. Among the bric-a-brac of my heart I still
cherish some of those little slips of paper with which we made
international love--question and answer.

"Vous allez m'oublier, et ne plus penser a moi--ni me voir. Les
hommes--egoistes--menteurs, pas dire la verite..." so ran the
questions, considerably devoid of auxiliary verbs and such details of
construction.

"Je serais jamais t'oublier," ran the frightful answers!

Dear Pauline! Shall I ever see her again? She was but twenty-six.
She may still live.

CHAPTER XIV

END OF BOOK THREE

So ended my pilgrimage. I had wandered far, had loved many, but I came
back to London without the Golden Girl. I had begun my pilgrimage with
a vision, and it was with a vision that I ended it. From all my goings
to and fro upon the earth, I had brought back only the image of a
woman's face,--the face of that strange woman of the moorland, still
haunting my d