“He said not a word, only looked at me; how he looked 35 at me! I felt guilty as a criminal. When I looked up he turned away––turned very politely, with lifted hat and a bow even you could not improve upon, Monsieur Loris, I watched him out of sight in the forest. He never halted; and he never turned his head.”
“You might at least have let him go without the thought that you were a flirtatious matron with a husband somewhere in the back-ground.”
“Yes; I almost regret that. Still, since I had to send him away, what matter how? It would have been so common-place had I said: ‘We receive on Thursdays; find Loris Dumaresque when you reach Paris; he will present you.’ No!”––and she shook her head laughingly, “the three days were quite enough. He is an unknown world; a romance only suggested, and the suggestion is delicious. I would not for the world have him nearer prosaic reality.”
“You will forget him in another three weeks,” prophesied Dumaresque; “he has been only a shadow of a man; a romantic dream. I shall refuse to accept any but realities as rivals.”
“I assure you, no reality has been so appealing as that dream,” she persisted. “I am telling you all this with the hope that once I have laughed with you over this witchcraft it will be robbed of its potency. I have destroyed the sacred wall of sentiment surrounding this ghost of mine because I rebel at being mastered by it.”
“Mastered?––you?”
“Oh, you laugh! You think me, then, too cold or too philosophic, in spite of what I have just told you?”
“Not cold, my dear Marquise. But if you will pardon the liberty of analysis I will venture the opinion that when you are mastered it will be by yourself. Your very well-shaped head will forever defend you from the mastery of others.”
“Mastered by myself? I do not think I quite understand you,” she said, slowly. “But I must tell you the extreme limit of my folly, the folly of the imagination. Each morning I go for a walk, as I did this morning. Each time I leave the door I have with me the fancy that somewhere I shall meet him. Of course my reason tells me how improbable it is, but I put the reason aside and enjoy my walk all the more because of that fancied tryst. Now, Monsieur Loris, you have been the victim of my romance long enough. Come; we will join Madame Blanc and have some coffee.”