I looked around and could see nothing but a confused mingling of objects living and dead; I could only distinguish clearly a woman bowing over the counter, asking me a question that I did not hear.  My agitation made me deaf and blind.

“Madame,” I said, “have you any ...  Chinese curiosities?”

“We have, monsieur, black tea, green tea, and some very fine Pekin.”

“Well, madame, ... give me some of all.”

“Do you want it in boxes, monsieur?”

“In boxes, madame, if you choose.”

I looked all around the room and saw nobody but two old women standing behind another counter—­no signs of Irene.

I paid for my tea, and while writing down my address, I questioned the saleswoman: 

“I promised my wife to meet her here at three o’clock to select this tea—­not that my presence was necessary, as her taste is always mine—­but she requested me to come, and I fear I have made a mistake in the hour, my watch has run down and I had no idea it was so late—­I hope she did not wait for me? has she been here?” Thereupon I gave a minute description of Irene de Chateaudun, from the color of her hair to the shade of her boot.

“Yes, monsieur, she was here about three o’clock, it is now five; she was only here a few minutes—­long enough to make a little purchase.”

“Yes, ...  I gasped out, ...  I know, but I thought I saw her ... did she not come in ... that door?”

“Yes, sir, she entered by that door and went out by the opposite one, that one over there,” said she, pointing to a door opening on New Vivienne street.

I suppressed an oath, and rushed out of the door opening on this new street, as if I expected to find Mlle. de Chateaudun patiently waiting for me to join her on the pavement.  My head was in such a whirl that I had not the remotest idea of where I was going, and I wandered recklessly through little streets that I had never heard of before—­it made no difference to me whether I ran into Scylla or Charybdis—­I cared not what became of me.

Like the fool that repeats over and over again the same words without understanding their meaning, I kept saying:  “The fiend of a woman! the fiend of a woman!” At this moment all my love seemed turned to hate! but when this hate had calmed down to chill despair, I began to reflect with agonizing fear that perhaps Irene had seen me at the Odeon with those dreadful women.  I felt that I was ruined in her eyes for ever!  She would never listen to my attempt at vindication or apologies—­women are so unforgiving when a man strays for a moment from the path of propriety, and they regard little weaknesses in the light of premeditated crimes, too heinous for pardon—­Irene would cry out with the poet: 

  “Tu te fais criminel pour te justifier!”

You are fortunate, my dear Edgar, in having found the woman you have always dreamed of and hoped for; you will have all the charms of love without its troubles; it is folly to believe that love is strengthened by its own torments and stimulated by sorrows.  A storm is only admired by those on shore; the suffering sailors curse the raging sea and pray for a calm.