Mr. Laurance saw a slow dumb motion of the pale lips that breathed no sound to fill the verbal frame they mutely fashioned—­“my husband;” and then with a gradual drooping of the heavily lashed lids, the eyes closed.  Only until one might have leisurely counted five was he permitted to scan the wan face in its rare beautiful repose, then again her eyes pitiless as fate met his—­so eager, so wistful—­and she too rose, confronting him with a cold proud smile.

“I fear Mr. Laurance unduly bemoans and magnifies a mistake, which, whatever its baleful intent, has suffered in my rude inhospitable hands an ‘untimely nipping in the bud,’ and most ingloriously failed of consummation.  After to-day the luckless incident of our acquaintance must vanish like some farthing rushlight set upon a breezy down to mark a hidden quicksand; for in my future panorama I shall keep no niche for mortifying painful days like this—­and you, sir, amid the rush and glow and glitter of this bewildering French capital, will have little leisure and less inclination to recall the unflattering failure of an attempted flirtation with a pretty but most utterly heartless actress, who wrung her hands, and did high tragedy, and stormed and wept for gold!  Not for perfumed pink billets-doux, nor yet for adulation and vows of deathless devotion from high-born gentlemen handsome and heartless enough to serve in Le Musee du Louvre as statues of Apollo, but for gold, Mr. Laurance, only for gold!”

“Do not inexorably exile me—­do not refuse my prayer for the privilege of sometimes seeing you.  Permit me to come here and teach you to believe in my——­”

“Le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle!” she exclaimed, with a quick nervous laugh that grated grievously upon his ear.

“Madame, I implore you not to deny me the delight of an occasional interview.”

A sudden pallor crept across his eager face, and he attempted to touch the fair dimpled hand which, still grasping the locket, rested upon the table.

Aware of his purpose, she haughtily shrank back, drew herself up, and folding her arms so tightly over her breast that the cameo ring pressed close upon her bounding heart, she looked down on him as from some distant height, with an intensity of quiet scorn that no language could adequately render, that bruised his heart like hail-stones.

“I deny you henceforth all opportunity of sinking yourself still deeper in my estimation, of annoying me by any future demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit.  If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day.  Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American embassy.  Resolved to forget the unpleasant incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is compelled to bid you good-bye.”