The world wheeled multi-colored and kaleidoscopic before Ste. Marie’s eyes, and in his ears there was a rushing of great winds, but he set his teeth and clung with all the strength he had to the tree which sheltered him.  His first feeling, after that initial giddiness, was anger, sheer anger, a bewildered and astonished fury.  He had thought to find this poor youth in captivity, pining through prison bars for the home and the loved ones and the familiar life from which he had been ruthlessly torn.  Yet here he was strolling in a suburban garden with a lady—­free, free as air, or so he seemed.  Ste. Marie thought of the grim and sorrowful old man in Paris who was sinking untimely into his grave because his grandson did not return to him; he thought of that timid soul—­more shadow than woman—­the boy’s mother; he thought of Helen Benham’s tragic eyes, and he could have beaten young Arthur half to death in that moment in the righteous rage that stormed within him.

But he turned his eyes from this wretched youth to the girl who walked beside, a little in advance, and the rage died in him swiftly.

After all, was she not one to make any boy—­or any man—­forget duty, home, friends, everything?

Rather oddly his mind flashed back to the morning and to the words of the little photographer, Bernstein.  Perhaps the Jew had put it as well as any man could: 

“She was a goddess, that lady, a queen of goddesses ... the young Juno before marriage....”

Ste. Marie nodded his head.  Yes, she was just that.  The little Jew had spoken well.  It could not be more fairly put—­though without doubt it could have been expressed at much greater length and with a great deal more eloquence.  The photographer’s other words came also to his mind, the more detailed description, and again he nodded his head, for this, too, was true.

“She was all color—­brown skin with a dull-red stain under the cheeks, and a great mass of hair that was not black but very nearly black—­except in the sun, and then there were red lights in it.”

It occurred to Ste. Marie, whimsically, that the two young people might have stepped out of the door of Bernstein’s studio straight into this garden, judging from their bearing each to the other.

“Ah, a thing to touch the heart!  Such devotion as that!  Alas, that the lady should seem so cold to it! ...  Still, a goddess!  What would you?  A queen among goddesses! ...  One would not have them laugh and make little jokes....  Make eyes at love-sick boys.  No, indeed!”

Certainly Mlle. Coira O’Hara was not making eyes at the love-sick boy who followed at her heel this afternoon.  Perhaps it would be going too far to say that she was cold to him, but it was very plain to see that she was bored and weary, and that she wished she might be almost anywhere else than where she was.  She turned her beautiful face a little toward the wall where Ste. Marie lay perdu, and he could see that her eyes had the same dark fire, the same tragic look of appeal that he had seen in them before—­once in the Champs-Elysees and again in his dreams.