ove and tenderness? Ah!

And if he had done as he felt inclined at the moment the ice might have
been broken, and at the end of the week they would probably have been in
each other's arms. But fate ordered otherwise, and an incident that
night, at dinner, caused a fresh storm.

Zara was looking so absolutely beautiful in her lovely new clothes that
it was not in the nature of gallant foreigners to allow her to dine
unmolested by their stares, and although the tete-a-tete dinner was
quite early at the Cafe de Paris, there happened to be a large party of
men next to them and Zara found herself seated in close proximity to a
nondescript Count, whom she recognized as one of her late husband's
friends. Every one who knows the Cafe de Paris can realize how this
happened. The long velvet seats without divisions and the small tables
in front make, when the place is full, the whole side look as if it were
one big group. Lord Tancred was quite accustomed to it; he knew Paris
well as he had told her, so he ought to have been prepared for what
could happen, but he was not.

Perhaps he was not on the alert, because he had never before been there
with a woman he loved.

Zara's neighbor was a great, big, fierce-looking creature from some wild
quarter of the South, and was perhaps also just a little drunk. She knew
a good deal of their language, but, taking for granted that this
Englishman and his lovely lady would be quite ignorant of what they
said, the party of men were most unreserved in their remarks.

Her neighbor looked at her devouringly, once or twice, when he saw
Tristram could not observe him, and then began to murmur immensely
_entreprenant_ love sentences in his own tongue, as he played with his
bread. She knew he had recognized her. And Tristram wondered why his
lady's little nostrils should begin to quiver and her eyes to flash.

She was remembering like scenes in the days of Ladislaus, and how he
used to grow wild with jealousy, in the beginning when he took her out,
and once had dragged her back upstairs by her hair, and flung her into
bed. It was always her fault when men looked at her, he assured her. And
the horror of the recollection of it all was still vivid enough.

Then Tristram gradually became greatly worried; without being aware that
the man was the cause, he yet felt something was going on. He grew
jealous and uneasy, and would have liked to have taken her home.

And because of the things she was ang