d distance mattered
only because they were so quickly passed.

It was Myrna Bliss who had suggested it because, had she not said? she
wanted to have a little talk with him alone before she left for Paris
that afternoon--and they would walk out along the road before her
father started, and the automobile would pick her up on the way.

And so they had come, and so she had talked and he had
listened--feasting his eyes upon the superb, alluring figure that
swung, so splendidly supreme, along beside him. She had told him of
Paris--Paris, the City Beautiful--of the great city that was the glory
of France, of its magnificent boulevards, its statues, its arches, its
wonderful architecture, its wealth of art garnered from the ages, its
happy mirth, its gaiety, its richness and its life, the life that would
now be his. And he had listened, rapt, absorbed, fascinated, as though
to some entrancing melody, now martial, now in softer strain, that
stirred his pulse as it carried him beyond himself, and unfettered his
imagination until it swept, free as a bird in air, into the land of
dreams, that knew a fierce, ecstatic echo in his soul--the melody of
her voice.

But now there had come a jarring note into that melody; and a sudden,
swift emotion, that mingled dismay, a passionate longing, a panic sense
of impotency, was upon him. The quick throb of the motor was sounding
from down the road behind them. Monsieur Bliss was coming now. In a
moment she would be gone.

She had heard it, too, for she ceased speaking abruptly, and, halting,
turned to face him.

"Isn't it too bad, Jean?" she cried disappointedly. "And I had hardly
begun to tell you about it! But then, never mind, the rest of it all
you will see for yourself in a few more days, when you get to Paris."

In a moment she would be gone! What was it that held him back--that
had always held him back before? He was strong enough--strong enough
to crush her to him, to cover that gloriously beautiful face with his
kisses, to bathe his face in the fragrance of her hair, to feel her
heart, the throb, the pulse, the life of her body against his own!
What was it that, strong as he was, was stronger than he?

"It--it is good-bye," he said, in a low, tense way.

She felt the passion that was possessing him--he read it in the
startled glance of the grey eyes before they were veiled; in the ivory
of the perfect throat grown colourful with the mounting red; in the
parted lips