for the last time. He was also leaving. He had gathered
some wild forget-me-nots. He was coming into Paris."

"And you parted unknown to each other?"

"How could I do else? When he said, 'I bid you good-bye, Mademoiselle
Unknown, but we shall meet again.' Then--then I did correct him a
little; I said _Madame_ Unknown, Monsieur."

"Ah! And to that--?"

"He said not a word, only looked at me; _how_ he looked at me! I felt
guilty as a criminal. When I looked up he turned away--turned very
politely, with lifted hat and a bow even you could not improve upon,
Monsieur Loris, I watched him out of sight in the forest. He never
halted; and he never turned his head."

"You might at least have let him go without the thought that you were
a flirtatious matron with a husband somewhere in the back-ground."

"Yes; I almost regret that. Still, since I had to send him away, what
matter how? It would have been so common-place had I said: 'We receive
on Thursdays; find Loris Dumaresque when you reach Paris; he will
present you.' No!"--and she shook her head laughingly, "the three days
were quite enough. He is an unknown world; a romance only suggested,
and the suggestion is delicious. I would not for the world have him
nearer prosaic reality."

"You will forget him in another three weeks," prophesied Dumaresque;
"he has been only a shadow of a man; a romantic dream. I shall refuse
to accept any but realities as rivals."

"I assure you, no reality has been so appealing as that dream," she
persisted. "I am telling you all this with the hope that once I have
laughed with you over this witchcraft it will be robbed of its
potency. I have destroyed the sacred wall of sentiment surrounding
this ghost of mine because I rebel at being mastered by it."

"Mastered?--you?"

"Oh, you laugh! You think me, then, too cold or too philosophic, in
spite of what I have just told you?"

"Not cold, my dear Marquise. But if you will pardon the liberty of
analysis I will venture the opinion that when you are mastered it will
be by yourself. Your very well-shaped head will forever defend you
from the mastery of others."

"Mastered by myself? I do not think I quite understand you," she said,
slowly. "But I must tell you the extreme limit of my folly, the folly
of the imagination. Each morning I go for a walk, as I did this
morning. Each time I leave the door I have with me the fancy that
somewhere I shall meet him. Of course my reason tells me how