Katrine shook her head.  “I do not want to forget.”

“No,” said Josef, “you never have wanted to forget, and that has made it hard for me.  You have a strange creed of your own.  But sometimes, when I know beyond words that I have received a ‘wireless’ message from you over the roof-tops, I begin to believe you dangerous, Katrine Dulany.  But your belief of ‘mind-curing’ people into being better has the seed of truth in it which makes so many new creeds dangerous.  You can make yourself so great by fine thinking that the people who come in contact with you understand and are uplifted.”

“It is a thing more subtle, Greatness!” Katrine answered.

“It is not a thing more subtle, Obstinacy!” he returned, with a laugh.  “However, have your way!  You are ordered, to Fontainebleau to-morrow.  Your voice is in rags, shall I say?  You will stay for two weeks at the house of Madame Lomard.  You will lie in the open and breathe much.  And so, good-bye to you!”

XIX

A VISION OF THE PAST

Anne Lennox’s residence in Paris was more closely connected with Frank Ravenel than the world knew.  In a letter which she had received from Mrs. Ravenel, after her illness at Bar Harbor, that comfort-loving old lady had written that she would like to go abroad for the winter if there could be found some homelike place to stay.

Mrs. Lennox had grown tired of New York, and she quickly devised a plan to take some of her servants with her, find a suitable establishment in Paris, and ask Mrs. Ravenel to make her a prolonged visit.  That Francis would probably accompany his mother to Europe and visit her as frequently as business made it possible was not overlooked in Anne Lennox’s calculations.

But Mrs. Ravenel, who was too fearful of her comfort to trust written descriptions, asked her son to step over to Paris, as she jauntily put it, and see Anne’s home before she committed herself.

“She writes me,” said Mrs. Ravenel, eyeing the invitation suspiciously, “that she has taken a house like a palace.  I lived in a palace once in Venice.  The walls were of marble, with moisture on them constantly, and there was but four feet of rug on a tiled floor forty feet square.  When I asked for fire they brought me a china basket with three or four semi-hot coals in it, and placed it in the exact centre of the room where one was liable to trip over it.  The experience cured me of ‘dreaming to dwell in marble halls.’  I want heat, electricity, and a large bath of my own.”

According to his mother’s wishes, Frank had written to Anne that business was bringing him to Paris, and that he would give himself the pleasure of calling upon her some time within the following fortnight.  In the stately old house, which she had taken on the Boulevard Haussmann, Anne awaited Frank’s coming with more emotion than she acknowledged to herself.  She knew that he had arrived in Paris