think, in black, who wore a cap; and an
old man, with white moustache and imperial, who looked as if he might be
a French officer. And the play--."

He broke off, and looked at the Duchessa. She kept her eyes down.

"Yes--the play?" she questioned, in a low voice, after a little wait.

"The play was Monsieur Pailleron's 'Le monde ou l'on s'ennuie'," he
said.

"Oh," said she, still keeping her eyes down. Her voice was still very
low. But there was something in it that made Peter's heart leap.

"The next time I saw her," he began...

But then he had to stop. He felt as if the beating of his heart must
suffocate him.

"Yes--the next time?" she questioned.

He drew a deep breath. He began anew--

"The next time was a week later, at the Opera. They were giving
Lohengrin. She was with the same man and woman, and there was another,
younger man. She had pearls round her neck and in her hair, and she had
a cloak lined with white fur. She left before the opera was over. I did
not see her again until the following May, when I saw her once or twice
in London, driving in the Park. She was always with the same elderly
Englishwoman, but the military-looking old Frenchman had disappeared.
And then I saw her once more, a year later, in Paris, driving in the
Bois."

The Duchessa kept her eyes down. She did not speak.

Peter waited as long as flesh-and-blood could wait, looking at her.

"Well?" he pleaded, at last. "That is all. Have you nothing to say to
me?"

She raised her eyes, and for the tiniest fraction of a second they gave
themselves to his. Then she dropped them again.

"You are sure," she asked, "you are perfectly sure that when,
afterwards, you met her, and came to know her as she really is--you are
perfectly sure there was no disappointment?"

"Disappointment!" cried Peter. "She is in every way immeasurably beyond
anything that I was capable of dreaming. Oh, if you could see her, if
you could hear her speak, if you could look into her eyes--if you
could see her as others see her--you would not ask whether there was a
disappointment. She is... No; the language is not yet invented, in which
I could describe her."

The Duchessa smiled, softly, to herself.

"And you are in love with her--more or less?" she asked.

"I love her so that the bare imagination of being allowed to tell her of
my love almost makes me faint with joy. But it is like the story of the
poor squire who loved his queen. She is the greates