uld not go about searching for the
vanished lady every moment of the day and night. That much
distraction, at least, he would allow himself.

It was now eleven o'clock. He would wait until _dejeuner_ was over,
and then he would go out somewhere--anywhere--so long as there were
moving crowds of people to furnish some chance of his meeting her
again. Next time, without fail, he would manage a conversation.

That afternoon then he stepped out of the _hotel_ and engaged a
_fiacre_--a taximeter would be of no use, Paul thought. Tearing
through the streets at break-neck speed annihilated distance rather
than time. He told the driver to take him anywhere he pleased, and
leaned back listlessly as he was piloted slowly through the avenues.

Paris, beautiful Paris, always intoxicated Paul. He had not cared for
it when he was younger. But in those days he was less cosmopolitan
than now. Our insular John Bull sees nothing outside our own tight
little island. But to Paul an awakening had come. Since those
wonderful weeks he had known in Switzerland and Venice--now long years
ago--he had looked out upon the world with different eyes. The
pulsating life of the streets quickened his own blood.

"To the _Bois de Boulogne_!" he directed the _cocher_, finally, and
soon they swung into the gay stream that flowed down the _Avenue du
Bois de Boulogne_ toward the most wonderful pleasure ground in the
world.

CHAPTER XIV

Paul found the _Bois_ as beautiful as ever, with its lakes and
rippling streams hidden away in the forests. But he was conscious of a
feeling of solitude as he rode along among the hundreds upon hundreds
of jangling equipages.

All the world was there it seemed to Paul. _Grande dames_ there were,
with gorgeous footmen on the box; and elegant little victorias
containing wonderfully gowned _demoiselles_. Paul recognized one of
the latter as a lady who had caused the disruption of a kingdom. There
were less conspicuous carriages, too, whose occupants seemed to be
having the best time of all--whole families, there, with father and
mother and laughing children.

Suppose the lady were somewhere in that wonderful throng of
pleasure-seekers? In what fashion would she drive abroad?

"God knows," he muttered hoarsely to himself, "who or what she may be.
Princess or lady's maid, I must find her."

So he rode on through the limitless _Bois_, that wonderful wilderness
of green trees and country pleasures, of _fetes_ a