the Avenue des Champs Elysees began, a powdery haze enveloped the equipages, overblown with their summer toilets, all speeding to Longchamps.  It was racing day, and Ermentrude, feigning a headache, had insisted that her uncle and aunt go to the meeting.  It would amuse them, she knew, and she wished to be alone.  Nearly a week had passed since the visit to Neuilly, and she had been afraid to ask her aunt what Madame Keroulan had imparted to her—­afraid and also too proud.  Her sensibility had been grievously wounded by the plainly expressed feelings of Octave Keroulan.  She had reviewed without prejudice his behaviour, and she could not set down to mere Latin gallantry either his words or his action.  No, there was too much intensity in both,—­ah, how she rebelled at the brutal disillusionment!—­and there were, she argued, method and sequence in his approach and attack.  If she had been the average coquetting creature, the offence might not have been so mortal.  But, so she told herself again and again,—­as if to frighten away lurking darker thoughts, ready to spring out and devour her good resolutions,—­she had worshipped her idol with reservations.  His poetry, his philosophy, were so inextricably blended that they smote her nerves like the impact of some bright perfume, some sharp chord of modern music.  Dangerously she had filed at her emotions in the service of culture and she was now paying the penalty for her ardent confidence.  His ideas, vocal with golden meanings, were never meant to be translated into the vernacular of life, never to be transposed from higher to lower levels; this base betrayal of his ideals she felt Keroulan had committed.  Had he not said that love should be like “un baiser sur un miroir”?  Was he, after all, what the princess had called him?  And was he only a mock sun swimming in a firmament of glories which he could have outshone?

A servant knocked and, not receiving a response, entered with a letter.  The superscription was strange.  She opened and read:—­

     DEAR AND TENDER CHILD:  I know you were angry with me when
     we parted.  I am awaiting here below your answer to come to you and
     bare my heart.  Say yes!

“Is the gentleman downstairs?” she asked.  The servant bowed.  The blood in her head buzzing, she nodded, and the man disappeared.  Standing there in the bright summer light, Ermentrude Adams saw her face in the oval glass, above the fireplace, saw its pallor, the strained expression of the eyes, and like a drowning person she made a swift inventory of her life, and, with the insane hope of one about to be swallowed up by the waters, she grasped at a solitary straw.  Let him come; she would have an explanation from him!  The torture of doubt might then be brought to an end....

Some one glided into the apartment.  Turning quickly, Ermentrude recognized Madame Keroulan.  Before she could orient herself that lady took her by both hands, and uttering apologetic words, forced the amazed girl into a chair.