But Ivor—­to be disappointed in him, to be made miserable by him!  I didn’t know it was possible to suffer as I suffered that day he went off and left me standing in the railway-station.  I didn’t dream then of going to Paris.  If anybody had told me I would go, I should have said, “No, no, I will not.”  And yet I did.  I allowed myself to be persuaded.  I tried to make myself think that it was to please Aunt Lilian; but down underneath I knew all the time it wasn’t that, really.  It was because I couldn’t bear to do the things I’m accustomed to doing every day.  I felt as if I should cry, or scream, or do something ridiculous and awful unless there were a change of some sort—­any change, but if possible some novelty and excitement, with people talking to me every minute.

Perhaps, too, there was an attraction for me in the thought that I would be in Paris while Ivor was there.  I kept reminding myself on the boat and the train that nothing good could happen; that Ivor and I could never be as we had been before; that it was all over between us for ever and ever, and through his fault.  But, there at the bottom was the thought that I might have done him an injustice, because he had begged me to trust him, and I wouldn’t.  Just suppose—­something in myself kept on saying—­that we should by mere chance meet in Paris, and he should be able to prove that he hadn’t come for Maxine de Renzie’s sake!  It would be too glorious.  I should begin to live again—­for already I’d found out that life without loving and trusting Ivor wasn’t life at all.

He couldn’t think I had followed him, even if he did see me in Paris, because I would be with my Aunt and Uncle, and Lord Robert West; and I made up my mind to be very nice to Lord Bob, much nicer than I ever had been, if Ivor happened to run across us anywhere.

Then that very thing did happen, in the strangest and most unexpected way, but instead of being happier for seeing him, I was ten times more unhappy than before—­for now the misery had no gleam of hope shining through its blackness.

That was what I told myself at first.  But after we had met in the hall of the hotel, and Ivor had seemed confused, and wouldn’t give up his mysterious engagement, or say what it was, though Lisa chaffed him and he must have known what I thought, I suddenly forgot the slight he had put upon me.  Instead of being angry with him, I was afraid for him, I couldn’t have explained why, unless it was the look on his face when he turned away from me.

No man would look like that who was going of his own free will to a woman with whom he was in love, that same queer something whispered in my ear.  Instead of feeling sick and sorry for myself and desperately angry with him, it was Ivor I felt sorry for.