r. How was he to foresee this sudden
flight? Suddenly a hope flashed upon him. He knew that the Princess
changed her plan as often as a bird its perch. Perhaps she might not
yet have gone; perhaps he should find her in the midst of preparations,
unhappy, undecided, asking Herbert's portrait for advice, and should
win her back by one embrace. He understood and could follow now all the
capricious turns of the romance which had been going on in her little
head.

He took a cab to the Rue de Courcelles. Nobody there. The Princess had
gone abroad, they told him, that very morning. A terrible fit of despair
came over him, and he went home instead of to the club, so as not to
have to talk and answer questions. His spirits sank even lower at the
sight of his great mediaeval erection and its front, in the style of
the _Tour de la Faim_, all covered with bills; it suggested the piles
of overdue accounts. As he felt his way in, he was greeted by a smell
of fried onions filling the whole place; for his spruce little valet
on nights when his master dined at the club would cook himself a tasty
dish. A gleam of daylight still lingered in the studio, and Paul
flung himself down on a sofa. There, as he was trying to think by what
ill-luck his artfullest, cleverest designs had been upset, he fell
asleep for a couple of hours and woke up another man. Just as
memory gains in sharpness during the sleep of the body, so had his
determination and talent for intrigue gone on acting during his short
rest. He had found a new plan, and moreover a calm fixity of resolution,
such as among the modern youth of France is very much more rarely met
with than courage under arms.

He dressed rapidly and took a couple of eggs and a cup of tea; and
when, with a faint odour of the warm curling-iron about his beard and
moustaches, he entered the Theatre Francais and gave Madame Ancelin's
name at the box-office, the keenest observer would have failed to detect
any absorbing preoccupation in the perfect gentleman of fashion, and
would never have guessed the contents of this pretty drawing-room
article, black-and-white lacquered, and well locked.

Madame Ancelin's worship of official literature had two temples, the
Academie Francaise and the Comedie Francaise. But the first of these
places being open to the pious believer only at uncertain periods,
she made the most of the second, and attended its services with great
regularity. She never missed a 'first night,