e the favor, Monsieur, of taking me back to the Galerie des
Glaces?" She turned her eyes away from the fountain, at which she had
gazed steadily while speaking, and looked at Calvert. He saw that they
were full of tears. The mask was down again. There was an humbled,
shamed expression on that lovely face usually so imperious. The look of
appeal and distress went to his heart like a knife. She made him think
of some brilliant bird cruelly wounded.

For an instant she looked at him so, and then resuming her imperious air
with a palpable effort and forcing a smile to her lips, she gathered up
her trailing gown and passed slowly beneath the colonnade, Calvert
following at her side. As she turned away, he stooped quickly and picked
up the white rose she had worn where it had fallen on the path.

CHAPTER XII

THE FOURTH AND THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY

For the next few weeks Mr. Calvert had little time--and, indeed, little
inclination--to see Adrienne. The discovery that he loved her had
brought pain, not happiness with it. He felt the gulf too wide between
them, both in circumstance and character, to be bridged. How could he,
an untitled American, an unknown young gentleman of small fortune,
pretend to the hand of one of the most beautiful, most aristocratic, and
most capricious women in Paris? He smiled to himself as he mentally
compared Adrienne with the simple young beauties of Virginia he had
known--with Miss Molly Crenshawe and Miss Peggy Gary--and he wondered a
little bitterly why he could not have fallen happily in love with some
one of his own countrywomen, whose heart he could have won and kept,
instead of falling a victim to the charms of a dazzling creature quite
beyond his reach. With that clear good sense which was ever one of his
most distinguishing traits, he fully comprehended the difficulties, the
impossibility of a happy ending of his passion, and, having no desire to
play the role of the disconsolate lover, he again determined to see as
little of Adrienne as possible.

For a while circumstances favored this decision. The French government,
being entirely absorbed in domestic affairs, Mr. Jefferson found himself
with more leisure than he had known for some time, and, being enormously
interested in the organization of the States-General, and realizing that
their proceedings were of the first order of importance, he drove almost
daily from Paris to Versailles to assist at their stormy deliberations.
M