shed red.

"I don't know how to explain to you;" she said.

"Explain nothing," pleaded Fred; "all I ask is Yes, nothing more. There
is nothing else I care for."

She raised her head coldly and haughtily, yet her voice trembled as she
said:

"You will force me to say it? Then, no! No!" she repeated, as if to
reaffirm her refusal.

Then, alarmed by Fred's silence, and above all by his looks, he who had
seemed so gay shortly before and whose face now showed an anguish such as
she had never yet seen on the face of man, she added:

"Oh, forgive me!--Forgive me," she repeated in a lower voice, holding out
her hand. He did not take it.

"You love some one else?" he asked, through his clenched teeth.

She opened her fan and affected to examine attentively the pink landscape
painted on it to match her dress.

"Why should you think so? I wish to be free."

"Free? Are you free? Is a woman ever free?"

Jacqueline shook her head, as if expressing vague dissent.

"Free at least to see a little of the world," she said, "to choose, to
use my wings, in short--"

And she moved her slender arms with an audacious gesture which had
nothing in common with the flight of that mystic dove upon which she had
meditated when holding the card given her by Giselle.

"Free to prefer some other man," said Fred, who held fast to his idea
with the tenacity of jealousy.

"Ah! that is different. Supposing there were anyone whom I liked--not
more, but differently from the way I like you--it is possible. But you
spoke of loving!"

"Your distinctions are too subtle," said Fred.

"Because, much as it seems to astonish you, I am quite capable of seeing
the difference," said Jacqueline, with the look and the accent of a
person who has had large experience. "I have loved once--a long time ago,
a very long time ago, a thousand years and more. Yes, I loved some one,
as perhaps you love me, and I suffered more than you will ever suffer. It
is ended; it is over--I think it is over forever."

"How foolish! At your age!"

"Yes, that kind of love is ended for me. Others may please me, others do
please me, as you said, but it is not the same thing. Would you like to
see the man I once loved?" asked Jacqueline, impelled by a juvenile
desire to exhibit her experience, and also aware instinctively that to
cast a scrap of past history to the curious sometimes turns off their
attention on another track. "He is near us now," she added.

And while Fre